Elephantiasis is an NTD: a neglected tropical disease. Although I think that the term falls victim to a desire in the sciences to give every concept a snappy abbreviation, this particular term encompasses a diverse array of nasty diseases, of which elephantiasis is the oldest known and most debilitating.

In light of this, the World Health Organisation (WHO) launched a global elimination programme in the year 2000, with the target completion date set for 2020. I’ll go into further detail in a later blog post, but in essence, the programme consists of large-scale preventative treatment in high risk areas, to complement direct treatment of those infected. It’s a colossal effort, but WHO claims that annual treatments over a period of 5 years will displace the disease from any given area. In aid of this, nearly 7 billion treatments have been handed out since 2000. That’s a staggering number.

To see how effective it has been, let’s look at the numbers: when the programme began there were more than 120 million people infected, and this has since declined to just under 40 million (the latest estimate); a considerable drop of about two thirds. Still, there are 900 million people who remain at risk, so committed nations need to keep up the pressure. These figures also make the target date of 2020 seem rather unrealistic, although WHO maintains that, by then, every single country where elephantiasis is commonplace will be free of transmission (or at least in post-intervention surveillance). So there is hope, not least because of a growing arsenal of anti-filarial drugs: stay tuned for when I talk to one of the scientists spearheading this work.