The patient – a man in his mid-30s – was languishing in a hospital in Bangladesh, infected with a disease called visceral leishmaniasis. He was so close to death he wasn't even eligible for the inadequate treatment then available: Thirty painful injections with a drug that often didn't work.
The disease, which is caused by a parasite spread by the bite of sandlies, had swelled his organs, recalls Dr. Dinesh Mondal, of the Dhaka-based research institute icddr,b. "His spleen was so big. His liver was not functioning. He was just left to die."
