Half the world’s population suffers from parasitic diseases that lead to illness, disability, and death. Onchocerciasis, leishmaniasis, trypsomiasis, schistosomiasis, filariasis, and malaria inflict a terrible burden on the world’s poorest people, trapping them in a cycle of illness, poverty, and despair. Until recent years, however, parasitic diseases had received scant attention and little research funding, either in the U.S. or internationally. In the early 1980s, the Foundation turned its attention to these enemies of human and economic development. It sought to strengthen the science underlying prevention by systematically applying the tools of molecular biology and genetics to parasitic diseases and the insects that transmit them.
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