We wish for you what we wish for those affected neglected tropical diseases – health and happiness this holiday season.
Ghorahuan School ©esther havens photography
To all the followers of End the Neglect and the Global Network, thank you for your continued support. See you in the New Year!
The holiday season is a time when people from all faiths celebrate with a common spirit of kindness and giving. It is in this spirit that Peter Hotez, M.D., Ph.D., president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, calls on the interfaith community to begin a dialogue on the devastating impact of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in his latest article in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Dr. Hotez encourages religious leaders to consider low cost treatments as a way to help some of their poorest constituents live a better life free from the heavy burden of NTDs.
It’s a reminder to us all that simple solutions exist to help improve the lives of others in need. To read Dr. Hotez’s full article in PLoS NTDs, follow this link.
By: Elizabeth Kurylo, Communications manager, International Trachoma Initiative
Eliminating a disease is no small task. It helps to have a detailed plan. Partners working to eliminate blinding trachoma, one of the seven neglected tropical diseases targeted by , have such a plan. It’s called 2020 INSight: The End in Sight.
Produced by the International Coalition for Trachoma Control (ICTC), 2020 INSight is a global strategic plan with crucial next steps toward trachoma elimination by 2020.More than 2 million people are either blind or suffer excruciating pain because of trachoma. It makes one person experience severe sight loss every four minutes and blinds four people every hour. Over 4.6 million are in the final, painful stages of this eye disease and require surgery to prevent them from going blind. It is endemic in at least 59 countries, in areas with limited access to water and sanitation.
A coordinated effort by governments, nongovernmental organizations, donors and other stakeholders is urgently needed to achieve the goal. Crucial next steps include the following:
More than 80 percent of the burden of active trachoma is concentrated in 14 countries, where immediate action is needed. Eliminating the disease in Africa alone would boost the continent’s gross domestic product (GDP) 20-30 percentage points based on conservative annual productivity loss estimates.
Since 1998, Pfizer Inc has donated more than 225 million doses of the antibiotic Zithromax® to treat and prevent blinding trachoma. The International Trachoma Initiative (ITI) manages the distribution of the medicine.
Get your copy of 2020 INSight at the ICTC website.
At this year’s American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) conference, experts emphasized the need to integrate neglected tropical disease (NTD) and HIV/AIDS interventions. Many of those who suffer from NTDs are also infected with HIV, and addressing both diseases with one intervention would actually be cost-effective and more clinically beneficial. Below is an article published by ASTMH that describes in depth the benefits of integration:
Global HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment efforts are missing a major opportunity to significantly improve health conditions in poor countries by simply adding low-cost care for the many other chronic and disabling diseases routinely afflicting and often killing these same patients, according to a panel of disease experts who spoke at the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH).
“People want better health; they do not understand why we silo diseases,” said Judd Walson, a global health and infectious disease expert at the University of Washington. “If you die from malaria, you don’t care that your HIV was treated. Communities want us to leverage the resources we have to treat and prevent disease as effectively as possible.”
Walson and his colleagues on the panel noted that many victims of HIV/AIDS also typically suffer from one or more of about 17 neglected, but burdensome, tropical diseases often called “diseases of poverty” because they prey on the “bottom billion”—the world’s poorest people. They include ailments such as trachoma, schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease and onchocerciasis, all of which are either insect-borne disease, bacterial infections, or caused by parasitic worms. Click here to continue reading.
