Even though no vaccine is available for yaws, if early diagnosis is achieved, treatment with the antibiotics can occur and sanitation can be improved to help stop the spread of the disease. The two most effective antibiotics to treat yaws are azithromycin and benzathine penicillin, both of which can be given with relative ease. Recently, the idea of complete eradication has come back up. But the mass effort was prematurely lifted and the disease returned, though not quite on the same scale as before. Previously, initiatives to eradicate yaws were undertaken with almost complete success. It has long since been thought that yaws could be a disease that can have complete eradication since humans are the only carriers of the disease. If left untreated, absenteeism rises among children and their future employment, especially feeding their families through farming, is impacted. When a child contracts yaws, their ability to go to school is jeopardized. Such a diagnosis is bad for anyone infected with the disease, but since mostly children suffer from yaws, it becomes a life-long issue if not resolved quickly. But if left untreated, a person can become permanently disfigured and disabled.
The disease is not life-threatening, which is likely why it became a neglected disease in the scope of global disease work. Yet, WHO states that “overcrowding, poor hygiene and socioeconomic conditions facilitate the spread of the yaws.” Yaws is spread through skin-to-skin contact, usually after a small injury occurs, something common when children play. Gender is not a determining factor of infection. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 75% of infected people are under 15 years of age, with most cases seen in children aged 6 to 10.
#Pinta disease skin#
They can cause skin lesions, bone pain, bone lesions, nose deformities and the thickening or cracking of a person’s hands and soles of the feet. All of these infections are transmitted through non-sexual contact with an infected person. Yaws is the most common endemic treponematoses, a group of bacterial infections that also includes nonvenereal syphilis and pinta.
The disease can be treated with penicillin, tetracycline, or chloramphenicol, and can be prevented through contact tracing by public health officials.Yaws is a relatively unknown disease in the developed world, but in poor tropical areas of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Western Pacific, it is common and can lead to disfigurement and disability. Diagnosisĭiagnosis is usually clinical, but as with yaws and bejel, serological tests for syphilis such as Rapid Plasma Reagin (RPR) and TPHA will be positive, and the spirochaetes can be seen on dark field microscopy of samples taken from the early papules.
These generally resolve, but a proportion of people with pinta will go on to develop late-stage disease, characterised by widespread pigmentary change with a mixture of hyperpigmentation and depigmentation which can be disfiguring. Three to nine months later further thickened and flat lesions (pintids) appear all over the body. Pinta is thought to be transmitted by skin to skin contact (similar to bejel and yaws), and after an incubation period of two to three weeks, produces a raised papule, which enlarges and becomes hyperkeratotic (scaly/flaky).