The diseases targeted in responding countries is mainly malaria and to a lesser extent, leishmaniasis.

Indeed, India alone accounts for one quarter of intestinal worm infections worldwide and more than one half of all cases of elephantiasis, leprosy, and visceral leishmaniasis.

And somebody like Dr. Victoria Hale, who started the world's first nonprofit pharmaceutical company, and whose first drug will be fighting visceral leishmaniasis, also known as black fever.

An outbreak of Leishmaniasis in Rachidya is met with shock by Lamia, who is outraged by the lack of movement in treatment by the Moroccan Ministry of Health.

In the New World, leishmaniasis is spread by sand flies of the genus Lutzomyia in the Old World, the disease is spread by sandflies of the genus Phlebotomus .

Last year, hundreds of volunteer biology and chemistry researchers around the world worked together to sequence the genome of the parasite responsible for some of the developing world's worst diseases African sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis and Chagas disease.