The fight to beat neglected tropical diseases was going well. 2025 could change that

Jonathan Lambert

December 10, 2025 / 5:39 am

Around 2018, Diango Tounkara started having trouble seeing at night.

"I didn't know what was wrong," she says in Bambara, a language spoken in her native Mali. "It was getting worse and worse by the day."

Eventually, a doctor told her she had trachoma, the leading infectious cause of blindness. Chlamydia trachomatis , a bacterium, causes the eyelids to swell and scar. Eventually, eyelashes can turn inward, and their continuous raking across the cornea leads to vision loss. Tounkara's problems suggested that had already started.

But the 51-year-old's problems ended in 2022, thanks to a program financed by the United States Agency for International Devel

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