Category Archives: post 2015

Measuring Success: Your Guide to the New Global NTD Indicator

NTDs, post 2015,
Community Drug distributor Raymond Kenneh with Nana Jusu.

Community Drug distributor Raymond Kenneh measures Nana Jusu with a dosing stick.

The Headline: The Inter-agency and Expert Group on the Sustainable Development Goals (IAEG-SDGs) has approved the inclusion of an indicator for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).

What are the Sustainable Development Goals?

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of 17 global targets that will define and guide the international community’s efforts to end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and create a healthier environment by 2030. They are essentially the world’s to-do list, and they were adopted by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in September.

A bit of history: The SDGs replace the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were established in 2000 and expire this year. The MDGs accelerated progress in many of their target areas, unifying the global community behind common goals.

What’s all this about an indicator?

In addition to “targets” that establish broad objectives, the SDGs include indicators to measure success on the targets. The indicators serve as a rallying point for the global community. With so many issues competing for resources, measurable, attainable goals are critical to command attention.

For this very reason, the NTD community has been pushing for an indicator to measure global NTD progress. More than 1.4 billion people around the world are infected with at least one NTD, but because of their low mortality rate, these diseases don’t get much attention on the global stage. However, treating NTDs is necessary to ensure that efforts to improve nutrition, education, health and economic productivity are successful. Controlling and eliminating NTDs is critical to ending extreme poverty.

The indicator, “number of people requiring interventions against NTDs,” at a meeting of the IAEG-SDG in October.

How did this happen?

NTD advocates have been pushing for an indicator for months. NTDs were little more than a footnote in the MDGs, so the NTD community has been working hard to secure some much-deserved attention in the SDGs.

The Global Network worked closely with the NTD community to advocate for this indicator, through correspondence with IAEG-SDGs members, an oral statement urging the inclusion of an indicator during a high-level meeting at the UN’s Economic and Social Council, and a community letter to all IAEG-SDGs members. END7, the Global Network’s advocacy campaign, also led three advocacy petitions urging the UN to prioritize NTDs in the SDGs.

So, we’re all good now, right?

Not quite. Once the IAEG-SDGs finishes its work, it will submit its proposed recommendations for the indicator and monitoring framework to the UN Statistical Commission. More unified advocacy from the NTD community will be needed to ensure that the final document is adopted in March 2016 without change.

Dr. Neeraj Mistry speaks at the UN ECOSOC High-Level Political Forum on July 9, 2015.

What Gets Measured Gets Counted

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A man is disfigured and shunned by his community. A child is too tired and sick to go to school. A woman is blinded by an infection. These are just some of the effects of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). There are 1.4 billion of these stories — one for each person whose life is impacted by an NTD.

We can’t tell every one of these stories, so we rely on numbers. 1.4 billion people. More than half a billion children. These numbers are our rallying cry. Statistics tell us where we are improving and where we are failing, and provide a sense of scale for problems too big to comprehend.

Fifteen years ago, the United Nations (UN) established the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight international development goals that brought together the global health and development community to tackle some of mankind’s greatest challenges. The eight narrow targets “helped channel everyone’s energies — and money,” according to NPR’s Nurith Aizenman. Unfortunately, that meant issues without clear targets were left behind. NTDs were listed in the MDGs as “other diseases,” and had no specific indicator. As a result, these diseases, true to their name, have remained neglected.

When the MDGs expire at the end of 2015, they will make way for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a new set of targets that present a second chance to ensure NTDs receive the attention they deserve. Back in 2000, the process of developing the MDGs was “brilliantly simple,” Mark Malloch-Brown, a member of the original UN team that developed the MDGs, told NPR. But things are very different this time around. With the MDGs far surpassing initial expectations, all eyes are on the SDGs, and the process is far from simple.

Following years of politicking and debate, the UN Summit is expected to adopt the finalized SDGs in September, and the UN Statistical Commission plans to set official indicators in March 2016. At last count, the proposal contained 17 goals and 169 proposed targets. Though critics say the proposal’s broad scope will dilute its effectiveness, these myriad goals will level the playing field, elevating important issues that were ignored by the MDGs.

NTDs are included in Goal 3 of the proposed SDGs, which reads, “by 2030 end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis, water-borne diseases, and other communicable diseases.” This explicit mention of NTDs is already an improvement over the MDGs, but what does it mean to “end the epidemic”? A clear indicator will be key to rallying support for NTD elimination.

But an initial draft of indicators presented during the March meeting of the UN Statistical Commission failed to include indicators for NTDs. As we have learned from the MDGs, “what gets measured gets counted,” said Global Network Managing Director Dr. Neeraj Mistry in remarks at the UN Economic and Social Council’s High-Level Political Forum earlier this month.

To effectively control and eliminate NTDs will require a coordinated global effort, and finding the right set of indicators will be extremely important. The NTD community strongly recommends:

90 percent reduction in the number of people requiring interventions against NTDs by 2030

Treating NTDs is extremely cost-effective and contributes greatly to the success of broader development goals. With medications already available, NTD elimination is not only possible, it’s within our grasp. And with a clear indicator, we can meet this target within the next 15 years.

Update: You can join the effort by asking your country’s representative to the UN to support and promote the inclusion of a global NTD indicator in the SDGs.

Photo: Dr. Neeraj Mistry speaks at the UN ECOSOC High-Level Political Forum on July 9, 2015.

Time for NTDs to Emerge from the Shadows

G7, policy, post 2015,

 

More and more, leaders from endemic and donor countries alike are recognizing the importance of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). NTDs, the most common diseases of the world’s poor, are on the agenda for this week’s G7 summit in Germany, where leaders from the G7 countries, along with representatives from the European Union and leaders from six African countries, will discuss key issues of economic, foreign, security and development policy.

At the World Health Assembly last month in Geneva, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that NTDs will be a top priority for the group, stating, “With relatively little material effort, the suffering of hundreds of millions of people could be combated.” Merkel also stressed the importance of close collaboration with affected countries.

The G7’s support will hopefully result in a much-needed boost to investment in NTD treatment and prevention efforts, and certainly raise the global profile of NTDs. The G7’s influence could be instrumental, as well, in ensuring that specific indicators for NTDs are incorporated into the United Nations post-2015 development framework and the final Sustainable Development Goals.

Established more than 15 years ago, the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set out measurable accomplishments to improve the world by 2015. Despite crippling health effects and evidence that NTDs perpetuate poverty, hunger and poor education outcomes, NTDs were lumped into MDG 6 under “other diseases,” lacking specific indicators to measure success or rally sufficient resources.

As the MDG deadline nears and the Sustainable Development Goals are finalized, an important opportunity presents itself to set clear mileposts for NTDs that were missing from the MDGs, catapult support for NTD programs, and help lift millions of the world’s most neglected people out of poverty. Watch our video to see why this is so important:

Special Envoys Urge the Inclusion of NTDs within the Sustainable Development Goals

policy, post 2015,

 

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In an effort to give greater visibility to neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and the one billion people affected by them, three of the Global Network Special Envoys, H.E. Alvaro Arzú Irigoyen, H.E. John A Kufuour and Dr. Mirta Roses Periago, wrote a letter to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in response to his recently released Synthesis Report on the post-2015 development agenda The report, entitled “The Road to Dignity by 2030: Ending Poverty, Transforming All Lives and Protecting the Planet,” provides a summary of the post-2015 process to date and is meant to serve as a guiding tool during upcoming intergovernmental negotiations.

The Global Network is very grateful to have such prestigious global health champions advocating on behalf of the 1.4 billion people who suffer from NTDs. In their letter, the Envoys encourage the Secretary General to recognize the importance of clearly identifying NTDs as a public health priority in order to unlock the economic and social potential of more than one billion people living in marginalized communities around the world.

NTDs are parasitic and bacterial infections that can cause impaired childhood growth and development, poor pregnancy outcomes, blindness and crippling physical disfigurements, as well as an increased likelihood of contracting HIV, thwarting opportunities for social progress and economic growth.

Even though NTDs were included in the Outcome Document of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals (OWG) in 2014, they are not specifically mentioned in the Synthesis Report. The Special Envoys urge the inclusion of NTDs in the final post-2015 development agenda and the corresponding sustainable development goals and indicators in order to give increased visibility to the people affected by these diseases. We have achieved impressive results in our efforts to control and eliminate NTDs over the past decade, however, both donor and endemic country governments must commit additional resources if NTDs are to be eliminated.

As the window to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) closes this year and we grow closer to finalizing the development goals that will shape the next 15 years, world leaders have an excellent opportunity to ensure that people suffering from preventable diseases have access to free and lifesaving medicines and are able to productively contribute to their communities.