The World Health Organization (WHO) has made a list of 18 diseases defined as “tropical” and “neglected”. It means that these pathologies affect people living in rural environments in tropical and subtropical countries. The affected populations live in conditions that favour the emergence or spread of diseases (lack of access to drinking water or sanitation, overcrowding, proximity to domestic animals and livestock…). In addition, these people do not have the resources to pay for a treatment, nor the ability to demand that governments take care of it. This makes them forgetful and excludes them from a system of research and innovation strongly determined by the market logic. In total, neglected tropical diseases affect more than 1 billion people each year.

If it affected people with purchasing power, yaws, along with other neglected tropical diseases, would already be eradicated.