There are two kinds of
infectious diseases in the world; diseases being paid attention and
neglected diseases. The former diseases include HIV/
AIDS,
tuberculosis and
malaria, the latter group include many parasitic, fungal, bacterial and some of
viral infections. "Neglected
Infectious Diseases", which have been renamed as Endemic Tropical Diseases by WHO, are endemic in the developing world are not newly appeared diseases, but diseases affecting humans in these decades. In fact, DALYs for several diseases in the category are big enough; more than 300 millions for soil-transmitted
helminthiasis, 5 millions for
lymphatic filariasis, 4-5 millions for
schistosomiasis and so forth. However, those diseases were not recognized as serious health problems because of socio-economical and/or scientific reasons. Furthermore, those diseases are no fatal in the acute phases; therefore, no big attention is raised by policy makers in the world. From the view point of basic medical sciences, however, there is no enough reason for neglecting the issues of those diseases: no improved diagnostics and
therapeutics have been developed in spite of the urgent necessities in endemic areas. Considering those situations, WHO has started to take action for solving the problems since beginning of the 21st century. Recently, many of developed countries are recognizing that the imbalanced input of human and financial resources only for 3 major
infectious diseases, HIV/
AIDS,
tuberculosis and
malaria, and then, various international schemes for supporting research on
Neglected diseases. DNDi, Drugs for
Neglected Diseases initiative, is one of the examples and it's scope is only focusing on
drug development for
Neglected diseases.
African trypanosomiasis is one of
Neglected diseases and causing serious health problem both for humans and domestic animals in Africa. No safe and effective medicine has been available but a
drug with serious side effects is only the
drug of choice even nowadays. Under the grant support from DNDi, a Japanese group is developing a new
drug,
ascofuranone, for
African trypanosomiasis without any detectable side effects. Developing new prophylactic drugs for
schistosomiasis and new diagnostic tools for
lymphatic filariasis are underway under the support of grant for Neglected or
Re-emerging infectious diseases in Japan. Considering that issues of "Neglected
Infectious Diseases" are urgent to be solved and also are challenging for modern medicine and medical sciences, researchers in the developed countries including Japan should make efforts to promote more active researches in this field.