1. Like you said, close to half the burden of these fungal diseases comes from infecting immunocomprimised individuals—and much of that from HIV. As with many situations, controlling the HIV underlying cause rather than targeting the fungus itself may often be more cost effective to manage this than controlling the diseases themselves
2. Like you say understanding and diagnosis fungal infections and of antifungals is surprisingly loose in LMICs. At OneDay Health we put a bit of effort in teach our nurses to differentiate fungal skin and other yeast infections from others which is often half the battle won. You can’t treat something with fancy drugs if you haven’t diagnosed it.
3. I wouldn’t have picked that invasive candidiasis kills that many, I’ll look into it more—interesting one!
4. You might (speculative) be underrating a little the possibility of a “miracle” drug for fungal infections. A lot of current antifungals have activity across different organisms, and there are a number of single dose treatments that are surprisingly effective. The pipedream exists of a tablet which you could take once and it would wipe most fungal infections.
Obviously drug companies are already spending huge amounts on this as fungal infections affect high income countries a lot too.
Great job! A few comments
1. Like you said, close to half the burden of these fungal diseases comes from infecting immunocomprimised individuals—and much of that from HIV. As with many situations, controlling the HIV underlying cause rather than targeting the fungus itself may often be more cost effective to manage this than controlling the diseases themselves
2. Like you say understanding and diagnosis fungal infections and of antifungals is surprisingly loose in LMICs. At OneDay Health we put a bit of effort in teach our nurses to differentiate fungal skin and other yeast infections from others which is often half the battle won. You can’t treat something with fancy drugs if you haven’t diagnosed it.
3. I wouldn’t have picked that invasive candidiasis kills that many, I’ll look into it more—interesting one!
4. You might (speculative) be underrating a little the possibility of a “miracle” drug for fungal infections. A lot of current antifungals have activity across different organisms, and there are a number of single dose treatments that are surprisingly effective. The pipedream exists of a tablet which you could take once and it would wipe most fungal infections.
Obviously drug companies are already spending huge amounts on this as fungal infections affect high income countries a lot too.