[FIRST PARAGRAPHS]
One third of the human species is infested with worms. The World Health
Organization estimates that worms account for 40 percent of the global disease burden
from tropical diseases excluding malaria. Worms cause a lot of misery.
In this article I will focus on one particular type of infestation, which is
hookworm. Approximately 740 million people suffer from hookworm infection in areas
of rural poverty: more than one human in ten, a total greater than 23 times the population
of Canada or twice the population of the United States. The greatest numbers of cases
occur in China, Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa—that is, mostly in the places in
the world where poverty is most severe
