Word: azar
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...cause of this destruction was kala-azar (scientifically known as visceral leishmaniasis), a deadly disease caused by a parasitic protozoan. The disease is transmitted by the bite of a sand fly that is about one-tenth of an inch long and is ubiquitous in certain woodlands. Once inside the body, the kala-azar protozoan invades and weakens the immune system, causing fever, weight loss, anemia and enlargement of the spleen. If the disease is untreated, a secondary infection, such as pneumonia or malaria, usually brings painful death...
...only the single-minded and often heroic intervention of the Dutch branch of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) that prevented Sudan's epidemic of kala-azar from turning into a modern-day version of the black death, which ravaged Europe in the Middle Ages. MSF, founded by French doctors in the early 1970s, not only was largely responsible for bringing the epidemic under control but in the process also developed new procedures for treating the disease under extremely harsh conditions...
...unassuming but iron-willed American woman from Moscow, Idaho, Dr. Jill Seaman, whose previous experience had been providing public-health services to Yup'ik Eskimos in the Alaskan wilderness. In an eight-year struggle against the disease, Seaman developed a wealth of clinical expertise in treating thousands of kala-azar patients, perhaps more than any other single doctor in history...
...disease Jill Seaman battled is not new. In the 19th century, kala-azar ravaged much of eastern India, where it earned its name--Hindi for "black sickness." In 1900 a British physician, Dr. William Boog Leishman, developed a stain to detect the parasite with a microscope, and Dr. Charles Donovan demonstrated that specimens could be extracted from the spleen. In their honor, the deadly parasite is called Leishmania donovani. Variants of kala-azar are found in southern Europe and South America. A complex treatment involving daily injections of a potentially toxic, antimony-based compound (as in the drug Pentostam...
...leader of the independence-minded Iranian Kurds, arrived in Vienna on July 11, 1989, to negotiate an autonomy agreement with emissaries of President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. After 10 years of fighting, the government seemed eager to reach a settlement. For two days, Qassemlou, his deputy Abdullah Ghaderi-Azar, 37, and Fadhil Rasoul, 38, a Vienna-based Iraqi Kurd serving as a mediator, talked in a borrowed apartment with interior-ministry official Mohammed Jaafari Sahraroudi and Hadji Moustafavi, a.k.a. Ladjeverdi, an intelligence operative. A third Iranian, Amir Mansour Bozorgian, stood guard at the door...