Researchers receive $2.95 million grant to create improved diagnostics for worm infections Global campaigns to eliminate two tropical parasitic worm infections have been hindered by a lack of good diagnostic tools. Since the turn of the century, multinational mass drug-treatment efforts have cut the number of people at risk of lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis by more than half, but more than half a billion people remain at risk. The next phases of these global disease elimination programs will require better tests for detecting people who are infected and infectious for others. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have received a $2.95 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create improved diagnostics for the two worm infections.