The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contributed $3.4 million to help in the fight against schistosomiasis, a tropical debilitating disease that has infected over 200 million people all over the world. The University of Georgia Research Foundation received the Foundation’s grant and the Director of UGA’s Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases remarked that the project has seen much success in reducing infections as continuous work is put towards eliminating the disease once and for all.

The Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases was established to foster research, education and services related to tropical and emerging infectious diseases and this grant by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will help the Center in its mission particularly as it relates to the fight against schistosomiasis, a disease caused by parasitic worms and second only to malaria as the most devastating parasitic disease.

Schistosomiasis is contracted when a person’s skin comes in contact with water that has been contaminated with the disease. Contamination occurs when cercariae, the infectious form of the parasite, emerges from certain types of freshwater snails.

The fight against schistosomiasis is extremely important in combating one of the most debilitating diseases in the world and thanks to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, $3.4 million will go to that cause.

– Taheera S. Randolph

Source: GPB News, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UGA Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases