![]() Pew further projects that the number of adherents to Islam will become roughly equal to Christians by the year 2050. With respect to the OIC nations, new studies by the Pew Research Center find that Muslims represent the fastest growing religious group and possibly the only one growing faster than the global population. In previous papers published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, we have pointed out the disproportionate impact of NTDs on Muslim-majority countries, Christian-majority countries, and in India. The religions of the world, mapped by distribution. The Hindu-majority countries are composed of India, Nepal, and Mauritius. Christian-majority countries comprise those in the Western Hemisphere, Europe, central and southern Africa, Philippines, and Australia. The Muslim-majority countries that comprise the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) are found in the Middle East and North Africa region, extending down to the African Sahel, as well as in Southeast Asia. As shown in Fig 1, the world’s religions are not evenly distributed. Today, of the estimated 7.4 billion (thousand million)_people living, approximately one-half to two-thirds are linked to the three largest religions: Christianity (2.0–2.2 billion people), Islam (1.2–1.6 billion), and Hinduism (0.8–1.0 billion). The finding has implications for engaging religious leaders in NTD control and elimination activities. New information based on data released by the World Health Organization (WHO) indicates that practically everyone infected with a major neglected tropical disease (NTD) lives in a Christian-, Muslim-, or Hindu-majority nation.
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