Are any countries making major steps in public health? originally appeared on Quora, the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

It might seem tough to believe coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent monkeypox scare, but yes, many are. Here are a few that The Progress Network has covered recently in our What Could Go Right? newsletter and podcast:

India: Waterborne diseases

Since 2014, India’s infant morality rate, under-five mortality rate, and neonatal mortality rate (newborns who die within 28 days) have all been steadily declining. The latest numbers, for 2019 to 2020, were especially encouraging. Neonatal mortality rates registered a 9.1% drop; under-five, 8.6%; and infant, 6.7%.

India is also in the midst of a massive initiative, began by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2019, for all rural households to have piped water by 2024. Over the summer, Modi announced a progress report: 52% of them, or 100 million homes, now do.

This project is bound to have a beneficial effect on public health. Already, the Hindustan Times reports, cases of waterborne diseases “have come down 66% . . . between 2019 and 2021 in areas provided with clean drinking water.”

Malawi: Trachoma

In 2015, 7.6 million people in the southeast African country of Malawi were at risk of losing their sight from trachoma, a bacterial infection that can lead to blindness. This year, there were zero. The World Health Organization (WHO) officially confirmed that Malawi has eliminated trachoma as a public health problem in September.

Malawi is the 15th country worldwide and the fourth country in Africa to achieve this. While trachoma is still an issue in 42 other countries, according to the WHO, “significant progress has been made over the past few years.” Between 2014 and June 2022, “the number of people requiring antibiotic treatment for trachoma in the African Region fell by 84 million.”

The United States: Cancer

When President Biden announced his “cancer moonshot” in September 2022, to reduce the death rate from cancer by 50% in 25 years, many may not have realized that the United States has been heading in that direction since the 1990s, thanks to early screenings and the development of better treatments.

According to a 2022 progress report from the American Association for Cancer Research, the 32% cancer death rate reduction between 1991 and 2019 has translated into nearly 3.5 million lives saved. To zoom in on one type of cancer, death rates from breast cancer have declined 43% between 1989 and 2020, according to the American Cancer Society.

It’s not an entirely rosy picture—care and outcome disparities exist across population groups, and costs associated with cancer are expected to rise—but it’s certainly an improvement, and lends credence to the idea that Biden’s moonshot is possible. Now, scientists are even working on vaccines to prevent pancreatic, colon, and breast cancer in high-risk individuals.

These are just three examples of the many strides public health officials, hand in hand with scientists and care workers, are taking to bring various maladies to heel. There are even more recent advancements, including the world’s first efficacious malaria and RSV vaccines. The work being done on HIV is notable as well, from vaccines to gene editing techniques to public health successes with the tools we already have. Australia, for example, is close to eliminating transmissions.

This question originally appeared on Quora.

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