Neglected Tropical Diseases Neglected No More? - Miller-McCune
World health leaders announce coordinated push to eradicate or control neglected tropical diseases.
Pharmaceutical companies, governments, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and others have announced a coordinated push to wipe out or control 10 neglected diseases by the end of the decade. (aydinmutlu/istockphoto)
Even after centuries, it’s hard getting noticed. While they don’t have the name recognition of an epidemic like AIDS (or the Bono star power), neglected tropical diseases, some of which have been around since at least 600 B.C., are the most common serious maladies for the 2.7 billion people on earth who live on less then $2 per day.
On January 30 in London, more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies, the governments of the U.S., United Kingdom, and United Arab Emirates, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, and others announced a coordinated push to wipe out or control 10 neglected diseases by the end of the decade.
Guided by the World Health Organization’s “roadmap” for overcoming the diseases, the group set lofty goals: global elimination of blinding trachoma, leprosy, lymphatic filariasis, and sleeping sickness by 2020; global elimination of guinea worm disease by 2015; and control, with targeted elimination, of Chagas’ disease, visceral leishmaniasis, onchocerciasis, schistosomiasis, and soil-transmitted helminths.
While the coordinated effort is focused on 10 neglected tropical diseases, the WHO lists a total of 17. Writer Paul Webster explored underfunded serious maladies in developing countries with his article titled “The AIDS Funding Dilemma,” in the July-August 2010 issue of Miller-McCune, which spawned numerous stories at miller-mccune.com about neglected tropical diseases.