Ninety per cent of the world’s 2 lakh annual kala-azar cases occur in five nations—Brazil, Sudan, Bangladesh, Nepal and India. And half of all the world’s cases together occur in Bihar.

Money from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—to which Warren Buffett has contributed some $31 billion—could change that, for India was the country most referred to by Melinda Gates when she gave an insight into the vision of how to spend that money.

“We are going to target areas where we can save the maximum lives. In India and Bangladesh, we can save 200,000 lives a year if we can eradicate kala-azar,” she said at the press conference in New York where Warren Buffett officially announced his decision to give his billions away to charity.

The Gates’ anti-AIDS campaign is well-known. But their Foundation has also taken up the challenge of dealing with other diseases that have plagued governments of poverty-stricken regions.

Kala-azar (black fever), or visceral leishmaniasis as doctors call it, is a deadly parasitic disease transmitted by the bite of female sandflies. The disease is almost always fatal if not treated.

The impact is worst in villages like Harpur Hardi, where women work in summer temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius, harvesting rice and wheat. Most know someone who has died of the disease; most do not have money for a full course of drugs, costing about Rs 4,000.

Not only are the least-expensive drugs beyond the reach of the poor, many of them become ineffective as the parasite develops into drug-resistant strains.

... contd.