Eating a meal in a restaurant is one of those trivial, everyday activities we take for granted in the developed world. For Canadian aid worker Louisette Pouliot, however, the simple act of grabbing a quick bite at an outdoor eatery in Ouagadougou, the capital of the African nation of Burkina Faso, had profound implications for her life and health.

Researchers from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, have shown the efficacy of an alternative drug against Leishmania amazonensis, one of the species that causes cutaneous leishmaniasis in South America.

A disfiguring skin disease has affected more than 200 children in southern Iraq in an outbreak that some health officials are blaming on the war's devastating effect on the nation's public health system.

Dutch researcher Wendy van der Meide has developed and evaluated new techniques for a better diagnosis of cutaneous leishmaniasis and an improved monitoring of its treatment. Accurately establishing the number of parasites in a skin lesion before, during and after treatment is vital, so as to prevent serious physical consequences.

A comparison of three parasite species that cause Leishmaniasis has identified a small number of genes, many new to biology, that will provide a framework to target the search for new treatments. Leishmaniasis is a devastating disease that affects about two million people each year and threatens one-fifth of the world's population and new treatments are desperately needed.