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The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative’s Delali Attipoe, Director of the non-profit’s North America branch, discusses the rising risks of climate-sensitive diseases such as dengue.
The trip from Zanzibar to San Francisco — via Dar es Salaam, Addis Ababa and Washington, DC — is gruelling at the best of times. For Delali Attipoe, suffering from dengue fever just as she set off, it was a nightmare. Wracked by chills, fevers and nausea in aeroplanes and airport terminals around the world, her only relief came from aspirin, cold compresses and water. “It was brutal,” recalls Attipoe, a decade on. As the newly recruited Director of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi)’s North American branch, she is gearing up to promote the development of better therapies for the infection.