00:00In the year 1014, Byzantine Emperor Basil II defeated the Bulgarian army and captured
00:0715,000 prisoners.
00:09He could have killed them, but he had a different idea.
00:13He wanted to weaken his opponents for decades to come.
00:17So he ordered that 99 out of every 100 prisoners be blinded, the 100th to be spared one eye
00:24to guide the rest back home, forcing their communities to care for them for the rest
00:29of their lives.
00:30Today, humans are subject to an attack just as cynical as this by a league of supervillains
00:36called NTDs.
00:39One in seven humans on the planet suffers from one or more NTDs, more than the entire
00:45population of Europe.
00:48They do unimaginable damage.
00:50By crippling countless people, they destroy billions of dollars in income each year, weaken
00:55communities and slow progress.
00:58But what are these monsters straight out of a horror movie, seeking to wreak havoc on
01:02our species?
01:10NTDs are caused by a vast range of different parasites such as worms, amoeba, bacteria
01:15or viruses.
01:16The symptoms they cause are just as diverse, and truly the stuff of nightmares.
01:21Some, like hookworms, compete with children's brains and bodies for nutrition, stunting
01:27growth, and impairing intelligence.
01:30Some NTDs cause blindness as a result of awful eye infections.
01:34Other parasites confine patients to bed for months and damage internal organs, often shortening
01:40lifespans drastically.
01:42Yet others cause horrible disfigurements that lead to social stigma, a life lived in shame
01:47and unemployment.
01:49There are also a few that are incredibly agonizing.
01:52They cause continuous itching or horrible pain.
01:56In fact, let's introduce you to one of them, Dracunculiasis.
02:00If you accidentally drink water infected by it, you won't notice anything for a year.
02:06Until one day, you suddenly see a blister on your leg.
02:10The worm breaks out of the skin to release new larvae.
02:13The only way to remove it is to slowly put it out of your leg, centre by centimetre over
02:19the course of several weeks, because Dracunculiasis is now up to a metre long.
02:24We can all agree that we should kill such parasites with fire.
02:28That's why we declared war on them, pleading to eradicate most of them by 2020, and we
02:33tried doing that very hard.
02:35In 1985, there were 3.5 million cases of Dracunculiasis all over the world.
02:41In 2015, there were 22.
02:44We killed 99.999% of these little monsters.
02:49It will be the first parasite we eradicate for good very soon.
02:54So even if they don't generate big headlines like Ebola did, actually, amazing things have
02:59happened when it comes to NTDs.
03:02All NTDs have one thing in common.
03:04They preferably attack humans who live in the most isolated communities and who are
03:08least able to defend themselves.
03:11There are villages that are 500km from the nearest health facility with no roads anywhere.
03:16So even if a remedy is available, what if it means going on an odyssey to get it to
03:20the patients?
03:22That's called for an attack using brute force.
03:25To stamp out NTDs once and for all, what's possibly the biggest medical program in human
03:30history was launched, unmatched in scale.
03:34Organizations from all fields are working together right now to eliminate 10 of these
03:38NTDs forever.
03:40Ironically, every NTD is in fact preventable or treatable.
03:45But most of them can only be controlled by giving medicine to every person in all high-risk
03:50areas.
03:51That means millions and millions of doses of medicine, often for several NTDs at a time
03:56over the course of years, in countries where there is no infrastructure.
04:01Governments and health organizations just couldn't do that by themselves.
04:05Here, humanity got an opportunity to show off what the industrialized production of
04:10medicine can achieve.
04:12The pharma industry stepped in to distribute the necessary drugs for free and promised
04:17to keep doing it until those 10 diseases are gone.
04:21By 2020, nearly 18 billion dollars worth of drugs will have been distributed, the largest
04:26drug donation the world has ever seen.
04:30They also helped make sure the drugs actually get to where they're needed.
04:34In 2015 alone, these treatments reached over 815 million people, more than the population
04:40of the EU and the US combined.
04:44Bad things happening generates headlines.
04:47Hundreds of millions of people overcoming extremely destructive diseases in an unprecedented
04:51act of cooperation doesn't.
04:54Stories like this one are not told often enough.
04:57Good things happen all the time, moving humanity closer to a future with no suffering.
05:03So if you or one of your friends are in need of uplifting news, share this video with them.
05:08We as a species really can do great things with no other motivation than to help each
05:13other.
05:14And it's good to remember that from time to time.
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