Cartograms of Neglected Diseases

In early November, we touched on the Neglected Diseases on this blog, wherein highly prevalent diseases across the world that cause significant morbidity (and some mortality) are disproportionately ignored because the global health infrastructure, mostly funded by western donors, pays more attention to diseases for which diagnosis/treatments return higher profits.  Well, here's a graphical representation of that narrative:

Figure 1 - shows the world as we normally think of, representing general land distribution by country

Figure 2 - goes a little further and scales the countries by population

Figure 3 - then shows the distribution of exposure to one neglected disease - Ocular Trachoma

Figure 4 - finally shows the distribution of Cholera cases, another of the neglected diseases

(note - again, all credit for these amazing maps go to worldmapper.org - please visit that site for much, much more, including housing, disaster, economic, and so many other cartograms.  these maps really tell stories and facts more convincingly than any written narrative.)

Figure 1: what we're normally used to seeing on a Mercator Projection of the world

         Figure 2: countries scaled for population...notice the relative engorgement of India and China

Figure 3: Trachoma - all of a sudden, Africa rears its head while the US, Europe and Japan disappear

Figure 4: Cholera cases - again Africa dubiously 'wins' this map, with a large showing from Pakistan.