‘We don’t see that in South Africa’

Of all neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), arguably the most neglected are helminthic infections, which comprise the top 5 of the top 10 NTDs in terms of disability-adjusted life years. Despite this, they are often assigned low priority in international public health research funding, and on a national scale, some helminth infections are considered to be non-endemic in particular countries or regions, hence little attention is paid to them. In this issue of the SAMJ, Black et al. describe a case series of geographically linked human fascioliasis, an infection about which most physicians are unaware. Indeed, the last recorded case of human fascioliasis originating in South Africa (SA) was reported more than 50 years ago and there have only been 3 published case reports in total.