Often, the poor are more prone to airborne diseases for not having enough money to afford proper living and access to quality healthcare. Various airborne diseases like tuberculosis and respiratory infections like pneumonia tend to attack the people who dwell in poor living conditions. Clean water, lack of food, and lack of proper sanitation can also prove to be fatal. This issue is often overlooked by the people belonging to the top of the social ladder.
Professor Mike Pollastri of the Chemistry department at Northeastern University thinks that these problems require immediate attention. He has dedicated most of his life finding a cure for these diseases and wants to prove that all lives matter. Pollastri, however, warns us that these diseases might soon be a part of the lives of people of the upper society. These diseases are moving from the north to the tropics and they generally get transported with increased travel and climate change. Pollastri says that diseases like Dengue fever and West Nile virus have already spread till Miami. He says that the deadly Chagas disease that has affected more than 300,000 people in the US might also start spreading once the bugs move to the north.
He left his job in the pharmaceutical industry and dedicated his career to research. To curb the spread of these diseases, Pollastri started a $25,000 crowdfunding campaign to make a link between tropical disease researches all over the world. It has culminated to take the shape of a big federal fund of $9.2 million. He was a man on a mission o stand firmly on the path of these deadly diseases and was driven by the moral requirement. He says, “I came to Northeastern because universities exist to generate knowledge to better humankind, the drugs we develop will be used to treat the poorest of the poor—the bottom billion”.
Subarna Basu