An author of one of the two reports recently published on climate change and human health says, “I think the health lobby has come late to this debate and should have been saying more”. People working in the health sector are of course already busy, and for them to focus also on issues where they have no professional experience (in this case climatology) might seem to be asking too much. Some might also say that developments in other fields are simply none of our business. However, as wider issues do have an impact on health, it is important for health professionals to take a broad view and to speak out where necessary.

It is all too easy to concentrate on one’s own particular specialty without considering how progress in this area might impact on other diseases or, indeed, vice versa. One article recently highlighted on TropIKA.net shows that some researchers are prepared to think out of the box; there is evidence that the treatment of girls for schistosomiasis can also reduce their vulnerability to HIV infection. Perhaps the most important implication is that well-funded HIV/AIDS programmes could improve their effectiveness through investing in schistosomiasis treatment, which is an extremely low-cost intervention.

Perhaps it is inevitable, however, that most of the developments we report on TropIKA.net are specific to particular diseases. Our remit extends to all the infectious diseases of poverty – see our ‘Diseases’ page for a list of our main priorities – but the majority of our articles and blogs over the last few days have concerned just two diseases, malaria and tuberculosis. They attract substantially more funding than neglected conditions and there is, therefore, simply more for us to report.

There have been encouraging results from a phase 2 trial of a potential TB drug and we should be seeing more such trials in the future with the TB Alliance announcing support for new partnership projects. A new TB test kit has been launched in South Africa, where trials of the MVA85A TB vaccine are also under way.

We have highlighted new data on malaria from places as far apart as Ethiopia and, more unusually, Colombia. The wealth of information on the effectiveness of interventions for malaria control is reaching the point where it sometimes seems overwhelming; can the technique of ‘decision analysis’ be of assistance to policy makers? We also report on two new malaria organizations. The European Alliance Against Malaria is a group of civil society organizations calling for the European Union (EU) to expand the support it provides for malaria control. The WorldWide Antimalarial Resistance Network will map the emergence of resistance to malaria drugs, and seek to guide global efforts to control and eradicate the disease.

These are very encouraging developments, made possible by the increased funding for TB and malaria that is now available. But what can be done to bring the level of support for neglected infections to an equivalent level? Diseases such as leishmaniasis – where there is a desperate need for treatments that are more effective and have fewer side effects – attract very little attention, except on the rare occasions that a celebrity has the misfortune to be affected. Perhaps, however, highlighting such cases (and perhaps enlisting the support of the celebrity concerned) could be one way to raise the profile of neglected diseases and bring in more funding. We need to persuade more people that the suffering caused by these diseases is also their business.

Paul Chinnock
Editor-in-Chief, TropIKA.net