Our planet is filled with marvelous science-based opportunities for improving human welfare at a tiny cost, but these opportunities are often unrecognized by policymakers and the public. There is no better example than treatment of a group of tropical diseases that maim and kill millions, but which are largely unknown to Americans and Europeans.

Experts formally refer to them as the "neglected tropical diseases," or NTDs. They are hellish infections whose combined impact on disease, disability and death rivals the impacts of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, yet they are far less known, partly because they are diseases that afflict only the poor in the tropics.

Seven of the diseases are caused by helminths (worm infections): hookworm, trichuriasis, ascariasis, schistosomiasis and dracunculiasis (guinea worm), onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis. Another three are protozoan infections: leishmaniasis, trypanosomiasis and Chagas' disease. Three more are bacterial: leprosy, trachoma and Buruli ulcer.

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