Tag Archives: Europe

UK Parliamentarians Call Attention to Neglected Tropical Diseases During Recent Debates

Global Health, NTDs, policy, ,

uk-parliament

This blog post was originally published on the Sabin Vaccine Institute website.  

Earlier this month the United Kingdom’s Houses of Parliament met on two separate occasions to discuss global health priorities  with debates on global health research and development and health systems strengthening. These debates occurred at a crucial time in the Parliament’s calendar as the UK draws closer to the end of this parliamentary session (2010 – 2015) and moves forward towards the General Election in May 2015. It is one of the last few opportunities for parliamentarians to raise awareness of key global health issues before a new Government and parliament is voted in during the spring of 2015.

Baroness Helene 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 (NTDs); and Jeremy Lefroy, Member of Parliament (MP) and Board Trustee for Sabin Foundation Europe, raised important points on the role of NTD control and elimination in alleviating poverty and needless suffering in these parliamentary discussions, highlighting successes to date and the challenges that lie ahead.

On Monday December 8th, following the release of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Tuberculosis report on Global Health Research and Development, the UK parliament’s House of Lords hosted a debate on research and development for tuberculosis, and the UK’s broader global health research agenda.

Baroness Hayman began by congratulating the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global TB on their recent report titled, Dying for a Cure: Research and Development in Global Health. She applauded the report’s recognition of the 1.4 billion people who suffer from NTDs and called for increased research for new tools to combat these diseases, highlighting the significant impact of vaccines in combating these diseases.

“[The report] has recognized that NTDs are diseases not only born of poverty but which create poverty,” she said. “They undermine education, employment, health—all the opportunities that would allow people to claw their way out of poverty. Therefore, combating the diseases of the poor, including the big three (HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria), is an essential element of the fight against poverty and for social and economic development.”

“For some of those diseases, we already have treatments for which we need more resources — for example, for mass drug administration for soil-borne helminth diseases,” argued Baroness Hayman. “But we still desperately need to develop better medicines, smarter diagnostics and, above all, vaccines if we are to make progress.”

Given the success of investments (including from the UK Government) in to product development partnerships (PDPs) such as Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative and PATH, in producing a number of new tools to combat diseases as well as filling a robust pipeline of candidates for clinical trials in recent years, Baroness Hayman called on the Department for International Development (DFID) to not only increase its budget to further support global health research and development (R&D) but also that continued support and greater investment be directed to  PDPs. PDPs, an innovative model of research that combines private, public and philanthropic partnerships to help develop and progress research candidates in the most efficient way possible, have proven themselves to be an excellent R&D model that is channeling results from investments.

Baroness Hayman also recognized that new tools for NTDs will play a vital role alongside the scale up of delivery of existing NTD treatments to help us achieve global goals in control and elimination of these diseases.

Baroness Hayman ended her comments with two final pleas to the UK Government. The first, to increase their commitment, and the resources they devote, to the “vital work of PDPs.” The second, “to not neglect the importance of the research that can take place in the countries and the communities where diseases are themselves endemic,” commenting on the importance of investing in capacity strengthening of scientists in countries with a high burden of these diseases.

On December 11th, two days after the House of Lords debate, the House of Commons convened for an additional debate following the final reports of the International Development Select Committee (IDC) inquiries on Health Systems Strengthening and Disability. Jeremy Lefroy MP, urged Parliament and the UK Government to continue to prioritize NTD efforts in the areas of health systems strengthening and disability.

In his comments, Jeremy Lefroy references the importance of integrated disease programs in Tanzania which have helped maximize the efficiency of health systems.

“This programme tackles neglected tropical diseases,” he explained. “Instead of looking at only one—lymphatic filariasis, for instance, or worms—it is tackling four of those debilitating diseases alongside each other.

In other parts of the world we find the use of pooled funds—for example, pooled health funds in South Sudan and Mozambique, the development partners for health in Kenya and the health transition fund in Zimbabwe. All are excellent examples of people coming together to strengthen health systems locally, showing that it is not simply about one person making their one vertical intervention, but everyone working to bring the money together and make the best use of it.”

Jeremy Lefroy also emphasized the importance of prevention for controlling and eliminating NTDs and malaria.

“[NTDs] affect the poorest people on this planet—something like 1.4 billion people in the course of a year.” He said. “In fact, NTDs not only affect the poorest people and cause morbidity and sometimes mortality, but they often cause disability. And they are eminently curable, or at least eminently preventable, often by very cheap interventions.

That is why I was thrilled that the last Government decided to make NTDs a priority, and this Government, through the London declaration on NTDs in January 2012, has continued that work, providing, I think, £240 million in total, including the money committed by the last Government, over a four-year period. I ask the Minister to ensure that that commitment to the prevention and treatment of NTDs is continued, because it has a huge impact on disability and the prevention of disability.”

As we draw closer to the end of the current set of Millennium Development Goal and global discussions on what happens next through the Post 2015 development agenda, these parliamentary discussions on global health issues in many countries, including those like the UK who are key champions for NTDs, will play a critical role in building the essential political will to increase efforts to reach global NTD goals. We hope that these discussions will also continue in other countries to stimulate further global discussion on recognizing the milestone achievements we have reached so far as well as what more must be done to end these diseases for once and for all.

To read the full transcript of the House of Lords debate, click here. To read the full transcript of the House of Commons debate, click here.

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New NTD Donor Group Launches in London, UK

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Global Network's managing director, Dr. Neeraj Mistry stands with Andy wright, Vice President of Global Health Programmes at GSK, and Chair of the Sabin City Group, John Cummins

Global Network’s managing director, Dr. Neeraj Mistry stands with Andy Wright, vice president of global health programmes at GSK, and chair of the Sabin City Group, John Cummins

In May 2014, the Sabin City Group, a newly formed donor group based in London, UK, hosted their inaugural event at the London headquarters of Credit Suisse to raise attention to the issue of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). With guest speakers including Andrew Bailey, Deputy Governor of Prudential Regulation at the Bank of England, Andy Wright, Vice President of Global Health Programmes at GSK and Global Network’s very own managing director, Dr. Neeraj Mistry, the 70 strong audience of bankers and corporate lawyers enjoyed an afternoon of discussion and debate on NTDs and the barriers to economic development and quality health and life.

The audience were startled to hear the facts: NTDs affect over one billion people including 800 million children globally, many of whom live on less than £1 per day. While NTDs may not kill in the same numbers that AIDS, TB and malaria do, many often lead to life-long suffering and disability, robbing people of their most economically productive years. NTD infections reduce school attendance among children and worker productivity for adults, trapping the most marginalized and vulnerable populations in a vicious cycle of poverty.  And yet, for just 50 pence per year, a person can receive treatment and protection against the seven most common NTDs, making control efforts against these diseases one of the most cost-effective investments in global health and development — largely thanks to the commitments of the pharmaceutical industry who have donated billions of doses of treatments for free.

Launched in the winter of 2013, the Sabin City Group is a partnership between corporate institutions in the UK and the charity Sabin Foundation Europe (SFE), the UK partner of the U.S.-based Sabin Vaccine Institute. This event was the first in a series of awareness and fundraising events to help achieve the group’s vision of building a UK corporate stakeholder movement that raises the awareness, political will and funding necessary, to control and eliminate the seven most common NTDs by 2020.

During the event, the Chair of the Sabin City Group, John Cummins, Group Treasurer of the Royal Bank of Scotland, launched the group’s ‘Guyana campaign’. This campaign is working to make history in the South American country of Guyana, to eliminate lymphatic filariasis (LF) by 2016. A Commonwealth country located on the northern coast of South America, Guyana has made progress in the fight against NTDs, but much work remains. The Sabin City Group is campaigning to reduce human suffering from these diseases of poverty through innovative delivery of treatments to an estimated 37,000 children at risk of soil transmitted helminthes (intestinal worms) and treatments to almost 690,000 people at risk of LF, a leading cause of disability globally. These investments will complement those already made by the Ministry of Health, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

You can follow the Sabin City Group’s activities on Twitter by following . If you would like more information about the Sabin City Group please contact and if you would like to donate to the Sabin City Group’s Guyana campaign, please click here!

The Neglected NTDs

Global Health, NTDs, , , Peter Hotez

By: Alanna Shaikh

The public discourse around the neglected tropical diseases focuses almost entirely on the developing world. We talk about the NTD belt in Africa, helminthes in Asia, Chagas in Latin America. We hardly ever, though, think about at the NTDs in the wealthy world. What do they look like, then, in the places we don’t expect them? According to Peter Hotez and Meredith Gurwith, not great. In a July 2011 article published in the Public Library of Science, they look at Europe’s NTD burden, and the results are frustrating but illuminating.

It’s an interesting view on our new world of wealth distribution. We’re moving away from rich and poor countries. What we have, instead, are rich and poor communities. And the poor communities of Europe, just like the poor communities of Africa – or the United States – are afflicted with neglected tropical diseases. They are truly diseases of poverty and not geography. More than 20 percent of the population of Europe – 165 million people – lives below poverty thresholds, and that’s where you find the NTDs.

Eastern Europe and Turkey bear the biggest helminth burden, high enough to cause concerns about cognitive development among children. This stems from several causes. They’re the poorest countries in Europe, and they’ve faced the most hardship. The Balkans lost ground on health care during the extensive regional conflict, and the former Soviet bloc countries suffered as they tried to develop health structures without the leadership and financial support of Moscow. Continue reading →

UK Coalition against Neglected Tropical Diseases Launches

NTDsAll Parliamentary Group on Malaria and NTDs, , , ,

The UK Coalition against NTDs was officially launched today at the All Parliamentary Group on Malaria and NTDs meeting in London. The Coalition is a partnership between UK organizations actively engaged in the implementation, capacity building and research of neglected tropical disease control at scale. Members include Sightsavers, Carter Centre UK, Centre for NTDs at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Partnership for Childhood Development and the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative. Goals of the Coalition include:

  • To raise awareness among UK, European, international policymakers and the broader health community of NTDs as a key barrier to attainment of the MDGs and poverty alleviation
  • To influence policy decisions to best support effective approaches for the long term sustainable control of NTDs
  • To ensure that NTD control is included within national, regional and international health and development frameworks
  • To create a strong collective identity within the UK on NTD control, supported by organizations delivering and supporting public health interventions to communities in extreme poverty
  • To expand the numbers of organizations committed to supporting NTD control both within and outside the health sector

For more on the UK Coalition against Neglected Tropical Diseases, check out this blogpost written by Archana Patel, Sightsavers’ Policy Advisor for NTDs.

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