The world is on the brink of eradicating two unpleasant tropical diseases, it was announced yesterday.
The World Health Organisation says guinea worm disease – also known as dracunculiasis – could be gone by 2015 and a second disease, yaws, by 2020.
WHO says the world is making "unprecedented" progress against 17 neglected tropical diseases.
Medicine donations and global partnerships have both played a key role, it says.
The report warns that one disease, dengue fever, poses a growing threat and is now 30 times as prevalent as it was 50 years ago.
It says that just 521 cases of guinea worm disease were reported in the first nine months of last year.
Cases of another disease, sleeping sickness or African trypanosomiasis, have reduced by three quarters this century – with fewer than 7,000 reported in 2011.
And some regions are also set to eliminate rabies, WHO says.
WHO director general Dr Margaret Chan said: "The prospects for success have never been so strong.
"Many millions of people are being freed from the misery and disability that have kept populations mired in poverty, generation after generation, for centuries.”
She added: "With this new phase in the control of these diseases, we are moving ahead towards achieving universal health coverage with essential interventions.
"The challenge now is to strengthen capacity of national disease programmes in endemic countries and streamline supply chains to get the drugs to the people who need them, when they need them."
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