The World Health Organization (WHO) is today expanding its program to fight some of the most neglected tropical diseases that destroy the lives and health of poor people. This expansion is possible thanks to a renewed collaboration with sanofi-aventis, which has agreed to donate medicines and financial support worth US$25 million over five years to WHO. This collaboration builds on a previous agreement between WHO and Aventis (now sanofi-aventis) to prevent deaths due to sleeping sickness. Since 2001, this work has saved the lives of an estimated 110 000 people who would otherwise have died from sleeping sickness...As well as sleeping sickness...the new project will also address leishmaniasis, Buruli ulcer and Chagas disease. All four diseases are among the most neglected in the world. The people who suffer from them are almost all poor inhabitants of remote, rural areas.