Monthly Archives: February 2014

Introducing Grace Gannon: END7 February Student of the Month

END7, NTDs, Student Advocacy, ,

 

Grace GannonEach month, END7 honors one student who has made a significant contribution to our growing movement of student advocates dedicated to seeing the end of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). We are very proud to introduce our February Student of the Month, Grace Gannon, who has distinguished herself as one of our most passionate and talented student leaders as an inaugural member of the END7 Student Advisory Board. Grace, a junior at the University of Texas-Austin studying public health, shares:

“The past seven months have by far been the best months of my life—oddly enough, due to a group of seven deadly diseases. I first heard about neglected tropical diseases from the book Forgotten People, Forgotten Diseases. I read the book over the summer and was fascinate​d with NTDs and their crippling effects in developing regions. I then had the privilege of meeting with the author, Dr. Peter Hotez of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, to ask what I as a student could do to make a difference for people suffering from NTDs. Dr. Hotez encouraged me that advocating for NTD treatment did not have to wait until I graduated from medical school, equipped with the necessary tools to treat infected persons. He convinced me that by involving the UT community, with a student body of over 50,000 and one of the most extensive and organized alumni networks in the country, I could begin to make a difference right away. Immediately I accepted the challenge, and what an incredible journey it has been.”

Grace founded END7 at UT in August of 2013 to involve her community in her new-found passion. She has formed a vibrant group of student advocates at UT in just a few months. “Through END7 at UT,” she continues, “I am able to put my passion for fighting NTDs into direct action. END7 at UT is reaching out to the UT and greater Austin communities to educate people about NTDs. Our goal is to enlighten the public to the widespread suffering that is silently prevailing across the developing world. We believe in health as a human right and want to educate and raise funds to support successful public health interventions such as rapid impact packages of NTD drugs.

UT Valentines Day

So far, END7 at UT has hosted two successful fundraisers on campus and has raised over $1,000 through our online fundraising page. Moving forward, we plan to host several awareness events, educating students to be effective advocates for NTD treatment programs. Overall, having the opportunity to work with END7 has been an incredible honor, and I cannot wait to see what END7 at UT will be able to accomplish.”

We are so grateful for Grace’s continued commitment to END7 and are excited to see our like her grow. If you are ready to get your school involved in END7’s work, contact student coordinator Emily on or at to learn how you can get started!

Achieving Zero Hunger by Addressing NTDs

nutritionAshley Schmidt

 

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Since the launch of The United Nations (UN) Zero Hunger Challenge in June 2012, chronic hunger has decreased worldwide. During a recent event hosted by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, DC, experts highlighted the need to do more to eliminate hunger and ensure the right to adequate food. The event, titled The Zero Hunger Challenge; Achieving the Right to Food for All, brought together a distinguished panel to discuss timely questions including; what partners need to do differently to address hunger more effectively now; what direction partners should move in and how do we decide who invests where – all with the aim of achieving the following:

  1. Zero stunted children less than 2 years
  2. 100% access to adequate food all year round
  3. All food systems are sustainable
  4. 100% increase in smallholder productivity and income
  5. Zero loss or waste of food

While the level of chronic hunger has decreased in the last two years from 868 million people living in chronic hunger in 2010-2012 to 842 million people living in chronic hunger in 2011-2013, according to panelist Jomo Kwame Sundaram, assistant director-general and coordinator for economic and social development of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), this represents only modest progress.  While this reduction is commendable, it is not enough.  Mr. Sundaram pointed out ”the target for nutrition for the Millennium Development Goals is not a particularly ambitious one”.  Therefore, the Zero Hunger Challenge is legitimized in its approach, fully encompassing the benchmarks the world needs to hit in order to adequately address the hunger needs of our world today.

The health impacts of hunger are daunting, leading to malnutrition, stunting, vitamin A depletion and increased susceptibility to infections and illnesses.  All these linkages were highlighted during the event at IFPRI; however, one major buzz word was missing when nutrition and health were being discussed-neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).  Interestingly enough, NTDs are also linked to malnutrition, stunting, Vitamin A depletion and increased susceptibility to infections and illness.

NTDs are an underlying challenge hindering nutritional goals. NTDs, particularly soil-transmitted helminths (STHs) and schistosomiasis, are important cofactors in causing and often leading to chronic malnutrition and hunger . These parasitic worms also suppress the appetite intensifying malnutrition. If child is left untreated for parasitic worms, within as few as two years, worm infections can deplete a child of vitamin A.  Vitamin A is also crucial to a child’s physical and cognitive development.   Furthermore, NTDs exacerbate anemia, particularly in pregnant women, and contribute to stunting in children.  Some NTD control programs are integrated with Vitamin A distribution in schools and or iron supplementation programs to address anemia.  However, more can be done on this front for global public health. Scaling-up integrated programs to comprehensively address nutrition and ultimately, hunger, will be essential to the Zero Hunger Challenge’s success.

The world still has much to do before meeting the Zero Hunger Challenge and I hope NTDs will not be left out of this conversation.  NTDs must be addressed as an underlying issue to malnutrition. The inclusion of NTD control and elimination efforts will only help in meeting the first pillar of the Zero Hunger Challenge-zero stunted children less than 2 years.

You can join the fight too, sign the Zero Hunger Challenge Deceleration http://www.un.org/en/ zerohunger/pdfs/ZHC-Declaration.pdf. Join the conversation by tweeting at  and

Zero Hunger Signiture

NTD Workshop in Nigeria Equips States with Necessary Skills and Resources to Succeed

Africa, NTDs, WHO, , ,

 

Together with international partners and NGOs, the government of Nigeria has the potential to drastically expand and strengthen their neglected tropical disease (NTD) program to treat and protect its population from the devastating impact of NTDs. Nigeria bears the largest NTD burden within sub-Saharan Africa, but the country’s national plan to tackle NTDs has already laid the groundwork for controlling and eliminating these diseases by 2020. However, additional training, especially at the state level, will help Nigeria scale up and maintain a sustainable NTD program that could lead to the control and elimination of NTDs by 2020.

Nigeria’s geography poses a unique challenge in the fight against NTDs. For example, each Nigerian state possesses its own quasi-autonomous state ministry of health — each with its own integrated NTD program. With this challenge in mind, The World Health Organization (WHO) and partners developed a training program for the first week in February for the 36 Nigerian states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to provide representatives with the tools and technical skills needed to establish, scale up and sustain integrated NTD programs within their respective states. The training was supported by The Envision project, The United project, and was attended by state representatives, including federal ministers of health, members of federal NTD teams and zonal coordinators and NGO partners.

Highlights from the 5-day training were shared through Twitter, thanks to and RTIinterntional:

 

Throughout the training, facilitators from Nigeria and the U.S. led sessions on scaling up integrated MDA programs, monitoring and evaluation, data management and advocacy. The facilitators also went over some basic but essential tasks – including filling out the appropriate forms to apply for NTD medications.

During her session, Global Network senior program officer Wangechi Thuo stressed the importance of effective advocacy in creating sustainable NTD programs. She led participants through exercises, demonstrating how to effectively raise awareness about NTDs among key policy influencers with the goal of garnering sustained ownership, leadership, and commitment from governments and their partners for NTD programs

 

The training also brought together key government partners including Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and the National Primary Health Care Development Agency. Together, partners discussed ways to better and more effectively distribute NTD medicine to populations in need. While Nigeria has the medicine necessary to treat its population, delivering the medicine to more than a hundred million Nigerians is a difficult task.

As the globe moves towards NTD elimination by 2020, Nigeria must remain a top priority given its large NTD burden. Thanks to this month’s NTD workshop, Nigeria’s government expects to see more and more people treated for NTDs, and more precise monitoring and evaluation of drug delivery in the coming year. Through continued government and partner support, Nigeria can see the end of NTDs. In the words of Dr. Bridget Okuaguale, Director of Public Health (DPH) at the Federal Ministry of Health, “We must work as a team, or we cannot go anywhere.”

House of Lords Debate in UK Parliament Highlights Advancements Made on NTDs

policy, , , ,

 

House_of_Lords_Alumni_Reception_(10327383746)

Last week, Baroness Hayman, Board Trustee at the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Vice-chair of the UK’s All- Party Parliamentary Group on Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases, chaired a House of Lords debate on the progress made in combating neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) since the 2012 London Declaration and what is required to drive future success. The members of the House of Lords particularly emphasized the strong link between NTDs and poverty, reiterating United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s acknowledgement that “poverty reduction and the elimination of NTDs go hand-in-hand.”

The Lords discussed a wide-array of important topics, including: efforts to include NTDs in the post-2015 development agenda; cross-sector collaboration to create sustainable change; pharmaceutical company donations; the importance of scaling up cost-effective mass drug administration (MDA) programs; and the urgent need to mobilize resources from additional donor and endemic governments to close the NTD funding gap.

Many NTD partners were also acknowledged, including the Sabin Vaccine Institute, the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, the END7 campaign and its , and Dr. Peter Hotez; the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI) and Dr. Alan Fenwick; the London Centre for Neglected Tropical Disease Research; and Sightsavers.

Below are key highlights from several parliamentarians. To read the full transcript, please click here.

Baroness Hayman:“The London declaration of 2012, whose second anniversary we mark with this debate, was hugely important, because it brought together funders, both national and philanthropic, pharmaceutical companies that donate the drugs necessary for mass drug administration programmes and endemic countries themselves in an effort to co-ordinate the fight against these diseases. Together with the ongoing support of the World Health Organisation, which has championed this work in recent years, we have seen a significant shift in the global prioritisation of neglected tropical diseases. Their inclusion in the healthy lives goal of the high-level panel on the post-2015 development agenda, published in May last year, was, I believe, a crucial step forward.”

Lord Blackheath:

“DfID is currently investing £50 million over five years towards the control of schistosomiasis and intestinal worms. For this amount, we will be heading to eliminate these infections in two of these countries and, for an estimated £50 million more, we could approach elimination in another four of these countries.”

Lord Patel:

“An urgent expansion of mass drug administration, not only to children but to women of childbearing age, for the eradication of hookworm and schistosomiasis is needed.”

Lord Alton:

“Scaling up integrated NTD control and elimination strategies is considered one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce global poverty. … the seven most common NTDs … cause blindness, huge swelling in appendages and limbs, severe malnutrition and anaemia—all brilliantly highlighted … in the featuring Eddie Redmayne and others.”

Lord Trees: 

“In spite of … remarkable commercial philanthropy, there is still a funding gap… Only 0.6% of overseas development assistance for health is devoted to NTDs. The British Government have set an excellent example, along with the US Government and NGOs, but I join the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, in urging the Government to exert all the pressure that they can on other richer countries, particularly in the EU, to ensure that they contribute more to this endeavour.”

Lord Crisp: 

“The other group worth mentioning is the communities themselves in Africa. The African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control, which is one of our partners at Sightsavers, has 100,000 community distributors of drugs, one in each village, who, once a year, deliver the drugs to everyone in the village in an attempt to eliminate the disease. That is an excellent example of community self-help, but it also allows them to distribute drugs for other diseases.”

Lord Collins: 

“Long-term elimination goals cannot be reached without addressing primary risk factors for NTDs, such as…having access to clean water and basic sanitation, vector control and stronger health systems in endemic areas. These issues will need to be addressed beyond the WHO 2020 goals and as part of the post-2015 development framework.”

Lord Bates: 

“Underpinning the results lies a collaborative network. We continue to work closely with donor colleagues, particularly the US Agency for International Development, the World Bank, the World Health Organisation and, of course, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to improve the way in which we tackle these diseases. National Governments are key partners too, particularly in the delivery of mass drug administration through schools and communities. … because these are diseases of the rural poor we should have people down at a village level engaged in tackling them.”