Introduction: A historic paradigm shift in communicable diseases in South-East Asia: from control to elimination -- Thailand: Elimination of mother-to-child HIV transmission -- Yaws: freeing young children in India from an old scourge -- Maldives: a long battle to banish malaria -- Unburdening the poor: elimination of lymphatic filariasis in Maldives -- Sri Lanka: long battle to eliminate malaria -- Lymphatic filariasis elimination in Sri Lanka: overcoming the odds -- Elimination of lymphatic filariasis in Thailand: a model for best practices -- Trachoma elimination in Nepal: bringing light, preventing darkness -- South-East Asia Region marches ahead on elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis: Sri Lanka becomes the third country in the SE Asia Region to be validated -- Leveraging health system gains towards eliminating mother-to-child transmission (EMTCT) of HIV and syphilis: How Maldives became the second country in WHO South-East Asia Region to achieve this feat -- Leprosy: accelerating towards a leprosy-free world.

Open Access

This book discusses the historical context, country experience, and best practices that led to eliminating infectious diseases from the WHO's South-East Asia Region, such as malaria, lymphatic filariasis, yaws, trachoma, and mother-to-child HIV in the mid-twentieth and twenty-first century. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (3.3) targets to end AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis, water-borne diseases and other communicable diseases by 2030. In this context, this book is of high significance to countries from the SEA region and around the globe. It helps create national strategies and action plans on infectious disease elimination and thus attaining SDG 3.3. This is an open access book.