The Untold Global Health Story of 2015: Mycetoma

The Most Neglected Disease

For the Global Health Untold Stories Contest of 2015, we and colleagues at the Consortium of Universities for Global Health received 170 nominations of diseases and issues that impact global health but receive little or no attention from the mainstream media.

After careful consideration, we selected a disease that few people have ever heard of. An affliction of the very poor in 23 equatorial countries, the flesh-eating, bone-destroying disease mycetoma has spread misery for centuries. Yet its prevalence and etiology are largely unknown even today. 

We sent writer Amy Maxmen to Sudan in November to document the disease, the people who suffer from it and the researchers working to stop it.  The result is a 3-part series we call The Most Neglected Disease.
 

World Health Assembly 2016

• Attention, Finally, for a Neglected Disease (May 28, 2016)

• An Obscure Disease: Hitting the WHO Where it Counts (May 27, 2016)

• Who Will Champion Mycetoma? (May 18, 2016)

• One More Chance for a Neglected Disease (May 17, 2016)

After the Series Follow-Up

• Update (Jan. 2016): Good News from Geneva

• End Mycetoma's Catch-22 (Commentary)

Series 

• Intro to the Series

• Part I: A Flesh-eating Fungus Wrecks Lives and No One Cares

• Part II: First Step for a Dreadful Disease: Get on the List

• Part III: The Opposite of Martin Shkreli: Drug Development Without Profit

Background 

• Q&A with Journalist Amy Maxmen: An Unjust Problem

• Q&A with Annie Liang & Simran Dhunna, Untold Story Contest Winners

If you'd like to donate to mycetoma research in Sudan, you can do so here, through the Sudanese American Medical Association.