Latest news with #NTDs
IOL News
04-05-2025
- Health
- IOL News
Global health financing faces unprecedented disruption amid donor cuts
World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Image: Christopher Black / World Health Organization / AFP In a world increasingly grappling with public health crises, the current turmoil in global health financing could have dire consequences for millions. World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says global health financing faces unprecedented disruption amidst donor cuts. During a media briefing on Thursday, Ghebreyesus said, 'we are living through the greatest disruption to global health financing in memory'. He said that for years, they have said global health financing needs to be changed and emphasised the importance of self-reliance and domestic financing. 'Of course, donor countries can spend their money where they want, and they have the right to spend it where they want,' Ghebreyesus said. 'We are grateful to those who have, for decades, funded health systems globally.' 'But instead of an orderly decline, or an orderly withdrawal, the abrupt cuts to overseas development aid and a challenging economic and trade environment are sowing chaos in public health,' Ghebreyesus continued. He said that, for instance, progress in combating neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), which affect over a billion individuals and disproportionately harm the most impoverished and marginalised populations, faces a significant risk of reversal. 'Thanks to the huge efforts of the U.S. government, more than three billion treatments have been delivered to 1.7 billion people in 26 countries over the past two decades,' Ghebreyesus said. 'The combination of 1.4 billion U.S. dollars from the United States, generous pharmaceutical donations, private sector innovation and largely public sector health workers has helped stop transmission of lymphatic filariasis, river blindness, schistosomiasis, intestinal worms and trachoma in 14 countries.' Ghebreyesus said Bangladesh, Benin, Cambodia, Colombia, Ecuador, Ghana, Guatemala, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Mali, Mexico, Nepal, Niger, Togo and Vietnam achieved elimination of at least one NTD. However, the abrupt cuts and withdrawal of U.S. financial support, coupled with decreased investments in NTDs from other donor nations, have resulted in the suspension of treatment programs for over 140 million people and research on new medical tools being cut. 'But it doesn't have to be this way, and we urge governments not to turn their backs on the poorest and most marginalised and undermine decades of progress,' Ghebreyesus said. 'Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg. 'Diseases continue to evolve, and with a heating world and protracted conflicts, there are continuing outbreaks and threats to health that need action.'
Zawya
18-04-2025
- Health
- Zawya
African health experts commit to accelerate efforts to eliminate Neglected Tropical Diseases
African health experts have renewed commitment to accelerate efforts to end Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) that continue to affect over a billion people globally, 40% of whom live in the African region. Meeting in Togo from 15 to 17 April 2025 for the NTD Programme Managers meeting, the experts also set in motion discussions and collaborations aimed at driving bold and more strategic approaches to end NTDs in Africa. The African region is home to twenty of the 21 recognized NTDs, including river blindness, lymphatic filariasis, leprosy, and several skin diseases that disproportionately affect the poorest and most marginalized communities. These diseases can cause severe disabilities, social stigma, and even death. Despite progress in recent years, all 47 countries in the WHO African Region remain endemic for at least one NTD, and 37 are battling five or more concurrently. 'We must step up our efforts while ensuring that no one is left behind,' said Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Acting WHO Regional Director for Africa. 'As we reach the mid-point of the 2021–2030 NTD Roadmap, it's not just a moment of reflection—it's a call to action.' The three-day hybrid meeting brought together over 45 national programme managers and various stakeholders, including global health partners and civil society organizations. The health leaders committed to enhance country leadership and increase domestic financing for NTD programmes to ensure long-term sustainability, accelerate the adoption of innovative diagnostic tools, digital technologies, and treatment methods to improve disease prevention, detection and patient care, strengthen national and community-based surveillance systems to track disease outbreaks and monitor progress more effectively and develop concrete national action plans to address persistent gaps in access to prevention and treatment services, particularly in underserved populations. The meeting, organized with support from the Kuwait Fund and other partners, was an opportunity for participants to reflect on key milestones, identify challenges, and shape effective strategies for NTD elimination. Representing the Minister of Health and Public Hygiene of Togo, Dr Wotobe Kokou commended the country's leadership in eliminating four NTDs—Guinea Worm, Lymphatic Filariasis, Human African Trypanosomiasis, and Trachoma—making Togo the first in the region to achieve this milestone. 'These successes are the result of strong political commitment, close collaboration with our partners, and exemplary community engagement. They demonstrate that with concerted efforts and innovative strategies, eliminating neglected tropical diseases is possible,' he said. Dr Amadou Bailo Diallo, WHO Representative in Togo, also lauded Togo's achievements and reaffirmed the importance of multisectoral and community-centered approaches in fighting NTDs. 'With funding cuts and climate change posing emerging threats to global health programmes, including NTD elimination efforts, addressing NTDs requires not just innovative strategies, but targeted support that focuses on the most vulnerable communities.' Dr Dorothy Achu, Team Lead for Tropical Vector-Borne Diseases at WHO Regional Office for Africa. 'We must ensure diseases disproportionately affecting the poorest and most marginalized populations receive needed attention and resources, particularly those that can be eliminated. With sustained efforts, we can end the burden of NTDs on Africa's communities'. WHO is working closely with Member States and partners to adapt public health strategies, enhance surveillance, and ensure timely responses to evolving NTDs challenges. By convening NTD stakeholders, disseminating guidelines, strengthening governance, and providing technical support in strategic and operational planning, policy development, capacity building, and strengthening surveillance, monitoring, and evaluation systems, the Programme Managers' meeting is a WHO initiative aimed at supporting country leadership and governance, with ongoing support from the Regional Programme Advisory Group The 2025 NTD Programme Managers' Meeting reinforces the commitment of the WHO AFRO and its partners to eliminate NTDs and improve the health and well-being of communities across the African Region. The meeting significantly contributes to aligning national and regional efforts with the global roadmap for NTD elimination and achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With renewed momentum, African countries are signalling a united front to bring an end to these preventable and treatable diseases. Distributed by APO Group on behalf of WHO Regional Office for Africa.
The Guardian
09-04-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
‘Some of these diseases are in the Bible': despair as cuts halt progress on age-old tropical illnesses
Since 2013, for around two weeks each year, Sulaiman Tarawallie has pulled on his community drug distributor (CDD) uniform and gone from household to household in his remote farming community to hand out medication to fight river blindness and lymphatic filariasis. Once he has completed the rounds of his village, he heads further out to take the drugs to even more remote homes – keeping the diseases that had plagued generations at bay with a handful of pills. But this year, Tarawallie, who works as a community health worker and primary school teacher in Sierra Leone's northern Bombali district, will not be making his annual trip. He is one of 30,000 CDDs in the country out of a job after the cancellation of USAID's work on neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). It represented a tiny fraction of USAID's budget, but had a huge impact, aid workers say. The World Health Organization recognises about 20 NTDs, debilitating conditions typically found among poor communities in tropical areas. USAID work focused on five of the most common: lymphatic filariasis, trachoma, onchocerciasis (also known as river blindness), schistosomiasis and intestinal worms. They can be brought under control – and in time eliminated – via mass drug distribution in communities. Everyone takes the pills, whether they show symptoms or not. The programme worked with the private sector, with every $1 of US government funding leveraging $26 in donated medicines for mass treatment campaigns. A fact sheet prepared by USAID's NTD team shortly before it was dismantled sets out the programme's achievements: treatments have been delivered to 1.7 billion people across 31 countries. In almost half of those countries, at least one NTD has been eliminated as a public health problem, meaning millions of people no longer require treatment for diseases including lymphatic filariasis, trachoma and river blindness. The programme was on track to repeat its success – 15 countries were expected to eliminate at least one NTD within five years, and 14 countries were in the middle of developing sustainability plans that would integrate NTDs into the wider health system. Tarawallie credits the US government for providing the drugs to defeat onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis, commonly called elephantiasis. Now people in his community in Makeh, on the outskirts of Makeni city, are free of them. 'Before, [these diseases] were wreaking havoc on people,' Tarawallie says. In onchocerciasis, a parasitic worm causes severe itching, bumps under the skin and blindness. In lymphatic filariasis, parasites damage the lymphatic system leading to the abnormal enlargement of body parts, causing pain and disability. Four of his relatives were affected. 'They felt shame and stigma, and didn't want to mingle with [other] members of the community,' he says. Tarawallie also took part in a US-funded programme that hands out bed nets and sprays mosquito breeding grounds with insecticide to cut malaria cases. That too has been halted, he says. Dr Angela Weaver, vice-president of the NTD portfolio at Helen Keller Intl, was the USAID team's first employee in 2006 when it launched. She remains proud of 'the greatest thing you've never heard of'. The spending of about $112m (£87m) a year was almost 'a rounding error' compared with USAID's bigger programmes tackling diseases like HIV and malaria, she says. 'For such a little amount, we've been able to reach so many people and we could finally get rid of some of these diseases that have been around since for ever. I mean, some of them were referenced in the Bible,' she says. 'To have that all put at risk is really devastating. Just in our programme alone, there's over 100 million people that are now going to be at risk.' Helen Keller Intl implements the USAID programme in six countries in west Africa, including Sierra Leone. Its work is currently suspended. 'These six countries are ones that have been in the programme the longest, so that we're starting to see the real impact of what happens when you actually invest continuously over time in these diseases,' she says. In Mali, 'the entire population was at risk for developing irreversible blindness because of trachoma, and two years ago, we were able to celebrate its elimination'. In January, Niger became the first country in Africa to eliminate onchocerciasis. For 2025, according to calculations by NGOs, the pharmaceutical companies that donate drugs had committed $975m worth of medication. 'Some of them had already begun to ship those drugs, and some were planned for shipment, and now everything's on hold,' says Weaver. Some drugs and diagnostic tests 'will end up expiring if not used', she adds. Some pharmaceutical companies were hesitating to ship supplies because they feared they would go to waste, others had suggested they might need to close down drug production lines 'if we stay in this state'. There are pockets of Africa that have yet to receive any mass drug administration, Weaver says. And even in the countries that have successfully suppressed the diseases 'they can still come back – we haven't changed the basic factors that make them possible'. That would amount, she says, to a waste of previously spent US taxpayer money. With organisations across global health reeling from widespread cuts, Weaver says she fears that NTDs will 'suffer from what we've always suffered from: that it's diseases that people don't know about, they don't understand, they're hard to pronounce, and they've just not been the priority when pitted against other diseases that kill people'. Tarawallie pleaded for a reversal of the decision. 'Thanks to this programme, you can never find someone who has these diseases in my community. But my worry now, if this programme is stopped, is the worst might happen.'
Zawya
30-01-2025
- Health
- Zawya
Vestergaard formalizes Tiny Targets commitment to support sleeping sickness elimination, signs Kigali Declaration on World Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) Day
Vestergaard Sàrl ( announced today, World Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) Day, that it has signed the Kigali Declaration on NTDs ( formalizing the company's commitment to support sleeping sickness elimination efforts through the ongoing donation of 'Tiny Targets' for vector control of the disease. The Kigali Declaration, launched in Kigali, Rwanda in June 2022, is a high-level, political declaration that is mobilizing political will, communities, resources and action, and securing commitments needed to end suffering caused by NTDs. By signing, Vestergaard joins the 83 existing governments and organizations that have already endorsed the Declaration. Sleeping sickness, known scientifically as human African trypanosomiasis, is an NTD endemic in sub-Saharan Africa. It is caused by protozoan parasites transmitted by infected tsetse flies ( and without treatment the disease is generally fatal. The gambiense form of the disease accounts for 92% of all cases, and the majority of people exposed to the disease live in rural areas. Yesterday, Guinea was announced as the eighth country to achieve elimination ( of gambiense sleeping sickness a public health problem. In 2023 just 675 cases were reported, down from 27,862 in 1999 – a drop of 98% ( The World Health Organization (WHO) road map for neglected tropical diseases 2021−2030 ( now targets this disease for elimination of transmission in 15 countries by 2030. The TrypaNO! and TrypElim partnerships were established to integrate control of the tsetse flies that carry the sleeping sickness parasite with a 'screen, diagnose and treat' strategy, with the aim of driving cases to zero ( With partners including the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine ( IRD ( FIND ( and the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) ( Vestergaard contributes to TrypaNO! and TrypElim by manufacturing Tiny Targets that attract and kill the tsetse flies to prevent infections being passed along to humans. Tsetse flies are particularly attracted to a specific shade of blue, so Tiny Targets use this colour to attract them, and they then fly onto Vestergaard's innovative insecticide-treated fabric. Since 2020, Vestergaard has donated Tiny Targets. In signing the Kigali Declaration on NTDs, the company is formalizing this commitment to donate up to 150,000 Tiny Targets every year to help achieve the 2030 elimination target for sleeping sickness as set out in the WHO road map for NTDs. This commitment is publicly available in the Kigali Declaration commitment tracker ( an online accountability mechanism that publicly tracks and manages commitments made against NTDs that is managed by Uniting to Combat NTDs. Amar Ali, CEO of Vestergaard, said: 'Disease elimination can feel like a lofty aim, but for some NTDs like sleeping sickness, we're really close. This success is due to strong partnerships, with multiple stakeholders working together to establish a fully integrated strategy of effective vector control, diagnosis and treatment – as well as essential cross-border support from countries for the implementation of these tools. It is a great demonstration of what can be achieved when the necessary interventions are made available and accessible when and where they are needed. We thank our TrypaNO! partners for their ongoing support, and Uniting to Combat NTDs for the opportunity to formalize our commitment to continue donating Tiny Targets as we work together to achieve the WHO elimination goals.' Dr Andrew Hope, Senior Programme Manager at LSTM, said: 'Vestergaard has been a partner in the Tiny Targets programme since its inception. In the early stages, they made major technical contributions to the materials and design of Tiny Targets and then followed this up with annual donations of Tiny Targets. They are essential partners in the effort to eliminate sleeping sickness.' Dr Isatou Touray, Executive Director of Uniting to Combat NTDs, said: 'Vestergaard's signing of the Kigali Declaration and ongoing donation of Tiny Targets for sleeping sickness control is a powerful demonstration of how innovation and partnerships can accelerate progress toward the WHO 2030 NTD goals. As we navigate an increasingly challenging global financing landscape, commitments like Vestergaard's are more important than ever to protect the gains we've made and continue driving down transmission. Achieving the WHO targets requires coordinated efforts and novel tools like Tiny Targets that are tailored to the unique challenges of diseases such as sleeping sickness. We celebrate partners like Vestergaard who remain steadfast in their commitment to improving the lives of millions of people worldwide and ensuring that NTD elimination becomes a reality.' Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Vestergaard Sàrl. Further information Media contact: Sarah-Jane Loveday, Director of Communication&Marketing sjl@ General enquiries: hello@ About Vestergaard Sàrl: Vestergaard is a dynamic social enterprise dedicated to innovation in material science that can help solve some of the world's most pressing challenges. Our PermaNet® insecticide-treated bed nets have become a mainstay of global malaria elimination programmes. Founded in Denmark in 1957, today the company is headquartered in Switzerland, with manufacturing and quality testing operations in Vietnam. We have a strong presence in Africa, with employees located across the Sub-Saharan region and facilities including a vector control research laboratory in Ghana established in partnership with the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research. We have been a member of the United Nations Global Compact since 2006, and a certified B Corporation since 2021.
