Category Archives: grassroots

How You Contributed to the Movement against NTDs in 2013 – and How We Can Do Even More

Africa, Asia, de-worming, elephantiasis, END7, Global Development, Global Health, grassroots, Latin America and the Caribbean, parasites, post 2015,

 

As 2013 comes to a close, we have reason to celebrate. END7 supporters helped treat entire communities of people suffering from neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in Honduras, Myanmar, and Kenya, and our partners have completed treatment programs for millions of people in other countries. We’re making progress in the fight against NTDs.

The hundreds of thousands of children, mothers, families and communities who benefit from NTD treatment motivate us to continue the fight; mothers like Alice who pray every day for the health of their families, and sisters like Neema who want to be healthy and free of parasites so they can play and learn with their siblings.

Watch our new video to see the people who are benefitting from our work. We want to say thank you for making a difference in their lives.

The effort to end NTDs includes a diverse group of global partners, including the World Health Organization (WHO), national governments, pharmaceutical companies, corporations and individuals. Just this year, world leaders took notice and stood up for the 1.4 billion people suffering from NTDs.  The World Health Assembly, the African Union and the Organization of America States all made commitments to end NTDs. Governments across the world made national plans to end NTDs within their own countries — and when so many END7 supporters spoke out on behalf of those suffering from  NTDs, the United Nations responded with a letter stating that the fight against NTDs is “paramount to the global efforts to eradicate poverty.”

We’ve come a long way, but we can do even more in 2014 with your help. We’re ready to expand our efforts next year and reach even more communities in more countries. Your donations help deliver medicine to hard to reach places, train healthcare workers to administer treatment, educate people about NTDs, prepare for annual pill distributions and help communities take ownership of their own treatment programs.

If we want to improve the health of the most marginalized communities, enhance economic performance and contribute to broader development goals, we need to press on in the fight against NTDs. Will you stand with us? Donate, or start your own campaign to amplify our efforts and improve the lives of those who need it most.

A World Without Worms

de-worming, grassroots, MDA, NTDs, , , ,

World Without Worms is a Canadian-based student-run initiative that advocates for school-based deworming programs. Below is a submission from its founders.

By: Abby Emdin, Fiona Emdin, Laura Hallsworth

In our community, we are known as the less than flattering, “Worm Girls.” We don’t mind. Although the issue of parasitic worms may possibly be the least glamorous around, we have come to realize that among teenagers it is also one of the most poorly supported and misunderstood issues in health. We stumbled upon it ourselves. After participating in our high school’s humanitarian trip to Kingston, Jamaica, we returned determined to try to find a way to improve the lives of students in developing countries.  With some research to determine where our efforts could be directed, we learned that over two billion people are infected by parasitic worm infections. Three hundred million of these are stricken with severe illness; half are school-aged children. We learned that chronic infections decrease the school attendance, literacy and life-time earnings of infected students.

We were amazed to discover that this serious problem had a very inexpensive treatment – less than 50 cents for medication per child. World Without Worms, our initiative, was born. For the last year, we have worked to raise money for sustainable, school-based deworming programs, by challenging people in our community to match the money spent on deworming their pets, and through a host of other fundraisers. We spread the word through our website, and through media interviews. We are working to expand our fundraising efforts to other schools, colleges and universities. One of our members, Abby Emdin, is currently involved in a competition for “Canada’s Next Top Young Philanthropist” where the winner is awarded ten thousand dollars for their cause. We thought the contest would be a great way to raise the profile of this issue. Please visit our website and lend your support at the contest site by voting daily until July 8th.

Looking back at the Campus Challenge

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Emily Cotter was a Student Ambassador for the Global Network in 2009. She has blogged for us in the past, and today she reflects on her experience advocating for NTDs.

In November 2009, the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases launched their inaugural Campus Challenge, a contest challenging students to become leaders in the fight to prevent, control and eliminate the world’s most common NTDs.  I had just returned from Sierra Leone a few months prior, having worked with Helen Keller International (HKI) on their NTD surveillance and control programs.  Inspired by the work I had done with HKI, I became a Student Ambassador for the Global Network in order to indulge my passion for advocacy and treatment of NTDs by recruiting other interested students at the George Washington University School of Medicine and leading one of these Campus Challenge efforts.

I knew that many of my fellow medical students were similarly interested in NTDs after recently learning about them from Dr. Peter Hotez during our Microbiology course.  A small group of us initially met to brainstorm ideas for the Campus Challenge – activities such as bake-sales, “wormy-grams” for Valentine’s Day, fundraising happy hours, and announcements and coin collections during classes.  We also organized alunchtime lecture given by Dr. Peter Hotez; this event educated the greater GW community about NTDs, the Campus Challenge, and ways to get involved with the campaign. At each of our events we mobilized a grassroots NTD army by advertising ways for interested students to get involved and join our campaign at GW.  In the end, I had more than 20 students on my email list for the campus challenge!

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Leprosy, Possibly the Most Annoying NTD

Commentary, Global Health, grassroots, MDA, NTDs, opinion, , , ,

By: Alanna Shaikh

Here’s the thing about leprosy. It’s totally, completely, absolutely treatable; World Health Organization (WHO) provides free drugs to make treatment even easier. Leprosy progresses slowly – like 20 years slowly and it is not infectious. So what the heck? Why can’t we just eliminate leprosy already? Why do people still get this disease? Why does it go untreated long enough that we still see ?

WHO pronounced the elimination of leprosy as no longer a public health threat, in 2000. That means that the disease has a prevalence of less than one case per 10,000 people[1], largely because multi-drug therapy for leprosy is really effective. (And, as I previously mentioned, free as the result of donations from Novartis and the Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development.)

But “not a public health threat” doesn’t mean “gone”. The 2008 disease burden for leprosy was 213,086 cases. Not a big number, I admit, but not zero. I want zero. Why can’t we have zero?

The reasons we are not at zero are, of course, depressingly familiar.  Though the drugs to treat leprosy are free, transportation and administration costs are not. You need a functional health system to diagnose leprosy, start patients on treatment, and make sure that they are able to finish their treatment.

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