The first parasitic infections that they learned that had treated were largely concentrated

in low and middle income countries.

And they recognized that there was not a huge profit to be made, but there was a huge

almost like global human health impact that it could have.

So from the beginning, Merck decided to produce it and distribute it through WHO programs

for free to huge portions of the globe.

And the two main diseases that it was treating at first, although it works against many of

them, was a disease called river blindness or an oncostrochiasis.

And that disease is particularly nasty in that it causes blindness in many communities

Africa, most of the adults over the age of 40 are blind.

They're led around by the children with sticks, so there's like epidemic of blindness.

Eventually, it preserved the site of future generations after it was distributed.

So it has this beautiful story about it.

And it transformed the public health status of good portion of the globe.

And for those impacts, and that beautiful, really public-private partnership, that impact

led to the warding of the Nobel Prize in Medicine to William Campbell and Satoshi Umora.