Celebrating 10 Years of Free Resources

Parasites Without Borders is celebrating 10 years of providing free educational resources to help eliminate human suffering from parasitic infections. Our foundational textbook recently released its Eighth Edition, now named in tribute to our dearly departed colleague and friend, Dr. Dickson Despommier. In honor of reaching a decade, we’ve gathered our top ten successes from the past ten years.

1. Reopening FIMRC’s Project Baduda, Uganda Site
During the COVID-19 pandemic, our partners at the Foundation for International Medical Relief of Children (FIMRC) had to stop in-person volunteer opportunities at their Bududa project site in Uganda due to a lack of funding. This left many patients without critical medical care. Parasites Without Borders raised $50,000 for Project Bududa, which allowed FIMRC to reopen the site. “After closing for May and June and seeing zero patients during that time, thanks to the generosity of Parasites Without Borders, FIMRC restarted operations in July and cared for 1,345 patients, including 243 malaria cases,” explained Brian Park, Project Bududa Strategic Advisor. “We delivered 19 babies in the month of July, and 647 of the patients we saw were children under the age of 5.”

2. The Most Fun Conference Around: The ASTMH Conference
The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) hosts a yearly conference that brings together the global health community who are dedicated to reducing the worldwide burden of tropical infectious diseases and improving global health. PWB was honored to attend the 2022 Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington, the 2023 Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois, and the 2025 Annual Meeting in Toronto, Ontario. It’s a humbling and transformative experience for healthcare professionals, but cost can be a barrier for early-career investigators and trainees from low and low-middle-income countries. That’s why, each year PWB has attended the meeting, we have sponsored travel awards to help qualified female scientists and physicians attend. We’re proud to have sponsored nine awards in total.

3. Hitting the Waves with MicrobeTV
The airwaves, that is. PWB is a proud partner of MicrobeTV, an independent podcast network for people who are interested in the life sciences. Our team contributes to three MicrobeTV podcasts, which are available on streaming platforms and YouTube. Dr. Daniel Griffin and Dr. Sara Dong host the Infectious Disease Puscast, a review of current infectious disease literature. Dr. Daniel Griffin, Dr. Christina Naula, and Dr. Vincent Racaniello host This Week in Parasitism (TWiP), a podcast about the tiny creatures that live on and inside us. Dr. Daniel Griffin also hosts Clinical Updates, a weekly review of trending topics in virology, on the show This Week in Virology (TWiV), a podcast about the viruses that make us sick. PWB is also a proud sponsor of The Incubator, MicrobeTV’s headquarters in New York.

4. Wait a Minute, Mr. Postman!
The foundation of PWB’s philanthropy is the distribution of free medical resources to clinicians, healthcare workers, and researchers who can make a difference. That means sending Despommier’s Parasitic Diseases, our beloved big red book, to people from around the globe, absolutely free of charge. We’ve now sent our seminal textbook to 124 countries and six continents (Antarctica, here we come!). Some deliveries are as simple as some stamps on a box, while other books go on quite the journey – more on that later. The free PDF version of our textbook, available on our website in both English and Spanish, has been downloaded thousands of times. We’re proud to support the professional development of all healthcare workers through our book!

5. Revealing a New Tropical Medicine Curriculum In September 2025, Parasites Without Borders revealed a brand new free educational resource. We partnered with a team of fellows and medical educators at Columbia University Irving Medical Center to develop a curriculum addressing a range of parasitic and tropical diseases. The curriculum has been evaluated and revised by a panel of expert clinicians and researchers from around the world. The series is a self-study tool with over 30 lessons, but it is an evolving work with additional sessions to come.

6. On the Frontlines of the COVID Pandemic
When the COVID-19 pandemic began making worldwide headlines in early 2020, Dr. Daniel Griffin, board-certified in Infectious Diseases, began doing what he does best – research and education. As one of the first doctors on the frontline of New York’s challenging pandemic response, Dr. Griffin treated more than 1,000 COVID patients in the first few weeks. These experiences led him to start a weekly clinical update on the COVID-19 pandemic on MicrobeTV’s “This Week in Virology” podcast, to keep thousands of practicing clinicians and staff up to date on the latest findings and treatments in an easily accessible format. Dr. Griffin also began studying Postacute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 Infections (PASC), or long COVID, early on and eventually published an academic article, “Postacute Sequelae of COVID (PASC or Long COVID): An Evidence-Based Approach.”

7. When A USPS Mailer Just Won’t Do It
Part of being committed to providing free educational resources to those who need them most is getting those assets where they need to go. In late 2022, we received an email from Shawgi H. Almugadam, PhD, an Assistant Professor of Parasitology in the Department of Parasitology and Medical Entomology and Faculty of Medical Laboratory Sciences at the University of Khartoum in Sudan. They had one of our textbooks, but with over 600 undergraduate students plus faculty, they needed more. That started a month-long journey of 700 textbooks from the United States to Sudan. Shipping 2,490 pounds of textbooks involved using an international freight service to Khartoum Airport, incurring associated costs, building a relationship with a customs broker, and Dr. Almugadam physically picking up the books from the airport in an open-air truck.

8. Philanthropy With Purpose
In addition to fulfilling our own mission, Parasites Without Borders consistently champions and fundraises for partner organizations that align with our values. We host quarterly fundraisers for the following organizations:

• Foundation for International Medical Relief of Children (FIMRC), a nonprofit dedicated to providing access to healthcare for low-resource and medically underserved families around the world.
• Floating Doctors, whose mission is to reduce the present and future burden of disease in the developing world and to improve healthcare delivery worldwide.
• American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH), the largest international scientific organization of experts dedicated to reducing the worldwide burden of tropical infectious diseases and improving global health.
• MicrobeTV, an independent podcast network that produces shows for people interested in the life sciences.

In addition to fundraising, Dr. Griffin has volunteered with the organizations. He and his family have taken multiple trips with Floating Doctors and FIMRC to sites in South America and Africa, volunteering in medical clinics, offering trainings and building friendships with the patients, staff, and other volunteers.

9. Science-Based Organizations
With a board composed of physicians, it should come as no surprise that our educational resources are thoroughly researched and evidence- and science-based. We continue that practice across our digital media channels by amplifying the messaging of science-based organizations. Our social media team creates engaging content that promotes world educational days, including World Zoonoses Day, World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day, and World Health Day by sharing information from sources like the World Health Organization (WHO), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and more.

10. To infinity, and beyond!
As we look forward to the future of Parasites Without Borders, our commitment to providing evidence-based information is stronger than ever. In a world where there is a growing miasma of disinformation, now, more than ever, the world needs a reliable source for accurate scientific knowledge. We promise to continue providing free educational resources, rely on research, science, and subject matter experts, update when new information is discovered, and never be scared to say, “I don’t know, but let’s find out.”

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for supporting our mission. We look forward to ten more years of sharing free education and fighting against the burden of parasitic disease.