Human immunodeficiency virus and hepatitis B virus exact a high toll worldwide. Both can lead to chronic disease, cancer, and death, and neither can be eradicated with the use of current therapies. Coinfection with the two viruses represents a major global health problem.

Between 2000 and 2008, measles control improved markedly worldwide, but with poorer countries focused on polio eradication and some richer countries falling prey to opposition to vaccination, the measles genie seems to have slipped out of the bottle in recent years.

Lymphedema in the tropics has two main causes: lymphatic filariasis caused by the parasitic nematode Wuchereria bancrofti, transmitted by mosquitoes, and podoconiosis, caused by microsilica particles from red-clay volcanic soil that enter the skin of the feet.

Although traumatic brain injury and traumatic amputations may be signature wounds of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the toll on military personnel from diseases and nonbattle injuries is substantial — and largely preventable. The critical element is command support.

Gonorrhea, which disproportionately affects marginalized populations, is the second most commonly reported communicable disease in the United States. Over the past 3 years, the gonococcus has shown decreased susceptibility to our last line of antimicrobial defense.

Somalia has been in the grips of disaster for two decades. Throughout this past summer, the human catastrophe dramatically worsened. Severe malnutrition and measles are rampant among Somali refugees in Kenya and Ethiopia and internally displaced people within Somalia.

Since the 1970s, when Chinese researchers demonstrated the artemisinins' antimalarial potency, artemisinin-based combination therapy has become key to malaria control. But reduced susceptibility of Plasmodium falciparum to artemisinin is now being seen in some places.