YOU’VE probably never heard of it, but yaws – a crippling disease that largely disappeared with the arrival of antibiotics – is making a comeback. Spread by casual contact, the chronic skin condition is caused by a bacterium similar to that behind syphilis. It begins as pustules and progresses to gross bone deformities. It can be cured with a long-acting penicillin shot.
Between 1950 and 1970, a World Health Organization-led programme treated 50 million people in 46 countries, cutting yaws cases by 95 per cent. However, in the 1970s, the final stages of the eradication scheme were handed over to local health…
