What is "yaws"

Yaws \Yaws\, n. [African yaw a raspberry.] (Med.) A disease, occurring in the Antilles and in Africa, characterized by yellowish or reddish tumors, of a contagious character, which, in shape and appearance, often resemble currants, strawberries, or raspberries. There are several varieties of this disease, variously known as framb[oe]sia, pian, verrugas, and crab-yaws.

contagious skin disease, 1670s, from Carib yaya, the native name for it.

n. 1 (context disease English) A contagious tropical disease, caused by the spirochete ''Treponema pertenue'', characterized by yellowish or reddish tumors, which often resemble currants, strawberries, or raspberries. 2 (plural of yaw English) vb. (en-third-person singular of: yaw)

n. an infectious tropical disease resembling syphilis in its early stages; marked by red skin eruptions and ulcerating lesions [syn: frambesia, framboesia]

Yaws is a tropical infection of the skin, bones and joints caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum pertenue. The disease begins with a round, hard swelling of the skin, 2 to 5 centimeters in diameter. The center may break open and form an ulcer. This initial skin lesion typically heals after three to six months. After weeks to years, joints and bones may become painful, fatigue may develop, and new skin lesions may appear. The skin of the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet may become thick and break open. The bones (especially those of the nose) may become misshapen. After five years or more large areas of skin may die leaving a scar.

Yaws is spread by direct contact with the fluid from a lesion of an infected person. The contact is usually of a non-sexual nature. The disease is most common among children, who spread it by playing together. Other related treponemal diseases are bejel (Treponema pallidum endemicum), pinta (Treponema pallidum carateum), and syphilis (Treponema pallidum pallidum). Yaws is often diagnosed by the appearance of the lesions. Blood antibody tests may be useful but cannot separate previous from current infections. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is the most accurate method of diagnosis.

Prevention is, in part, by curing those who have the disease thereby decreasing the risk of transmission. Where the disease is common, treating the entire community is effective. Improving cleanliness and sanitation will also decrease spread. Treatment is typically with antibiotics including: azithromycin by mouth or benzathine penicillin by injection. Without treatment, physical deformities occur in 10% of cases.

Yaws is common in at least 14 tropical countries as of 2012. The disease infects only humans. In the 1950s and 1960s the World Health Organization (WHO) nearly eradicated yaws. Since then the number of cases has increased and there are renewed efforts to globally eradicate the disease by 2020. The last estimate of the number of people infected was more than 500,000 in 1995. Although one of the first descriptions of the disease was made in 1679 by Willem Piso, archaeological evidence suggests that yaws may have been present among humans as far back as 1.6 million years ago.

Yaws (Yet another web server) is a web server written in Erlang by Claes (klacke) Wikström. Yaws can be embedded into other Erlang-based applications or run as a regular standalone web server.

Because Yaws uses Erlang's lightweight threading system, it performs well under high concurrency. A load test conducted in 2002 comparing Yaws and Apache found that with the hardware tested, Apache 2.0.39 with the worker MPM failed at 4,000 concurrent connections, while Yaws continued functioning with over 80,000 concurrent connections.