Guinea worm is similarly close at the moment. A truly horrifying parasite that’s sort of a cross between spaghetti and the chestburster from Aliens, if the chestburster took about a week to borrow its way out of you. Not fun! In the 80s it was infecting millions but now it’s down to tens of cases a year. The pain at the moment is that a reservoir has recently been found in dogs.
Malaria was at one point tried. While it is carried by mosquitoes they are technically not a reservoir as its just in the human blood that they carry and transmit it to other it bites (i.e. mosquitoes are a vector in this case). So in theory when it’s out of humans it’s dead. The attempt to eradicate it is an interesting story that I’m sure I’ll get to at some point.
Measles is the other main possibility that springs to mind. It sounds crazy considering how insanely infectious it is most of the hard work has already been done here. We’re already vaccinating 80% of the world for measles. However it’s like I mention in the post, if we improve health systems across the board then all of these are addressed at once. That said eradication efforts do generate a lot of enthusiasm (enthusiasm=money) so there’s pros and cons to each approach.
Just read about the guinea worm, pretty nasty. it sounds like clean drinking water would solve that, to your point about generally improving health systems.
Yes thats right, also filtering drinking straws work when the water infrastructure isn't in place.
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