Focus on the HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria epidemics has deflected attention and resources from about seven treatable diseases that have a greater impact on health care and development in Africa, according to a study published in the November edition of PLoS Medicine, the Financial Times reports. Diseases such as schistosomiasis, ascariasis, sleeping sickness, river blindness, elephantiasis, hookworm and blinding trachoma affect about 750 million people and kill more than 500,000 people annually in sub-Saharan Africa, the report says.