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It is estimated 700,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses in 2020, most of them in developing countries. Over 4 million people have died of COVID-19 and over 3 million more died from tuberculosis and malaria. Infectious disease accounts for about 29% of under-age-five child deaths in developing countries, and malnutrition plays a role in about half of these deaths (WHO 2005). When these diseases interact – HIV, for example, interacts adversely with tuberculosis, malaria, and malnutrition (Abu-Raddad et al. 2006; Gandy and Zumla 2003; Gillespie and Kadiyala 2005; Herrero et al. 2007) – the consequences are multiplied exponentially. Moreover, maternal mortality takes one in 74 women each year away from their families (World Health Organization 2004). Syndemic infection during pregnancy adds a significant additional level of risk to what is already a risky situation for most women in the Third World (Ayisi et al. 2003). Other less attended to and “neglected diseases” kill millions more people each year 2008. Sometimes called tropical diseases, they are, as Nichter (2008:151) stresses, “diseases of poverty, development, and political ecology – not climatic happenstance.” Notably, they, too, tend to occur in overlapping geographic zones and to involve polyparasitism or other comorbidities and harmful disease interactions (Hotez et al. 2006). COVID-19 also interacts synergistically with various non-communicable diseases or conditions—including diabetes, obesity, severe asthma, respiratory, and cardiovascular diseases—with serious health consequences.