Tag Archives: post 2015

Calling All Campus Campaigners!: END7’s New Resources to Support Student NTD Advocacy

END7, policy, post 2015, Student Advocacy, ,

 

UNGA Poster

Over the past year, the END7 campaign has dramatically increased its base of student supporters at universities around the world. Students at dozens of universities have organized advocacy, education, and fundraising events, raising over $21,000 for END7 during the 2013-2014 academic year alone. The representatives of the END7 Student Advisory Board are hard at work planning a new year of on-campus activities to support the NTD control and elimination effort.

This year, the END7 campaign is involving students in promoting all of our online advocacy actions and providing them with resources to plan their own events on campus. September’s focus centers on the opening of the 69th United Nations General Assembly in New York – the starting point for the final round of deliberations that will finalize the post-2015 development agenda and adjoining Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs, which will succeed the Millennium Development Goals set in 2000, will play a key role in guiding international development and global health efforts over the next fifteen years. It is critical that a health target to control and eliminate NTDs is included in the final SDGs, not only to ensure that they are prioritized on national and global development agendas over the next fifteen years, but also because treating these diseases is necessary to ensure that our goals to improve nutrition, education, health and economic productivity are successful.

To that end, END7 has launched a petition targeting Ambassador Elizabeth M. Cousens, United States representative to the UN Social and Economic Council, asking her to continue to support the inclusion of NTDs in the SDGs as the goals are being finalized over the next year. To help us spread the word and collect more signatures on this important petition, we created a Student Action Kit to give students all the tools they need to be informed and effective NTD advocates: key facts about the United Nations and the SDGs, suggested tweets to promote the petition, ideas for events to help drum up support on campus, links to factsheets and a downloadable poster to spread the word, and even a Prezi presentation students can give to classes and club meetings.

Students have already made tremendous progress in their advocacy – in just one week, they’ve collected over 500 signatures on the petition, and our END7 Student Advisory Board representatives are poised to collect 500 more on post cards we printed with space for personal messages asking Ambassador Cousens for her support of the inclusion of NTDs in the SDGs. We know this outpouring of public support will send a strong message to the United Nations as we chart a course for the next fifteen years of international development efforts – a message that our generation is committed to seeing the end of NTDs.

We are so proud of our student supporters’ efforts to speak out on behalf of the poor and vulnerable communities most impacted by NTDs. If you (or a student you know!) want to get your campus involved, email me at to get started, check out our Ideas for Students, and join our .

New Paper Highlights Key Progress, Challenges Ahead of Post-2015 Agenda Setting

policy, post 2015, poverty, ,

 

boys collecting water in Citoboke, along the Congo Border

In an important new paper, “Neglected tropical diseases: now more than just ‘other disease’ — the post-2015 agenda,” published in International Health, David Molyneux, professor at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, captures why defeating neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) is so critical. He writes, “The overall context of NTD control is the contribution it makes to the alleviation of poverty and improved social and economic prospects of individuals and communities.”

Given NTDs’ profound impact on poverty — and the potential for their control and elimination to make progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and targets set in the post-2015 development agenda — NTD partners must do everything possible to ensure World Health Organization (WHO) targets are met by 2020.

Before outlining the key challenges and actions needed to overcome them, Professor Molyneux recognizes advancements made in the global NTD fight.

For instance, in 2006, the U.S. committed resources to implement integrated NTD control programs through USAID, while in 2008, the UK pledged financial support through DFID, marking the beginning of their longstanding commitments to NTDs. In 2012, following the creation of the WHO Roadmap for NTDs and the formation of the London Declaration, the World Health Assembly (WHA) passed a historic resolution on all 17 NTDs in May 2013.

2013 was also a milestone year because the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel report included NTDs alongside other pressing global health issues. Following this momentum, in spring 2014, a Lancet editorial reiterated the importance of addressing NTDs in the Sustainable Development Goals, and in summer 2014, the draft SDGs featured NTDs under proposed goal 3, “Attain healthy lives for all.”

Efforts in endemic countries have also led to successes. For instance, innovations in mapping disease burdens and diagnostics prove that “defining the areas of intervention can be undertaken rapidly and without the need for invasive or intrusive procedures [which have] been a contributing factor in the successful scale up of mass drug administration.” Community Directed Treatment (CDTI) and the reliance on existing infrastructure have helped “ensure that drugs are collected and distributed in ways that are best decided by the communities themselves.”

Yet remaining challenges could threaten the tremendous momentum attained to-date. The challenges — and their solutions— according to Professor Molyneux include:

Funding. “The funding provided is a fraction of that available for other diseases and a reflection of the gross inequity to implement programs that address the diseases of the poor.” Even with generous support from the U.S. and UK, funding from endemic countries and new commitments — such as resources pledged through the London Declaration to address soil-transmitted helminths — resource mobilization among diverse development partners is needed to ensure donated medicines reach the most vulnerable communities.

Implementation. Even though “over the past 3 years, in excess of 700 million treatments have been given annually” for the seven most common NTDs, efforts must be scaled up to reach all at-risk people, especially in conflict areas.

Human resources. Mass drug administrations all around the world are carried out through the work of thousands of health workers and volunteers — such as in Myanmar. But health systems must continue to be strengthened to adequately handle competing health priorities and deliver NTD and other treatments.

Application of research. While the NTD community has produced a rich body of research, “moving policy into practice needs to be accelerated.”

With the progress made thus far, there is clearly no choice but to continue the good work being carried out and expand efforts where current challenges lie.

To read the paper, click here. 

Global Health Partners Continue to Urge the Inclusion of Neglected Tropical Diseases in the Post-2015 Development Agenda

post 2015, poverty,

 

ARK_4141

In a recently-released policy brief, partners from the global health community continue to urge all United Nations (UN) Member States to ensure that the forthcoming post-2015 framework include specific targets for the control and elimination of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs); Doing so would reduce human suffering, increase economic prosperity and help achieve greater global equality for more than one billion people affected by NTDs in the developing world.

Because NTDs have far reaching effects on several other poverty and development interventions – such as efforts to increase maternal and child health, combat HIV/AIDS and increase school attendance and nutrition – the inclusion of NTDs in the post-2015 framework would be a win for not just the NTD community, but for all those seeking to end poverty, increase health and boost prosperity.

Even more, when integrated with water and sanitation, nutrition, child and maternal health, and education initiatives, NTD control and elimination efforts are proven more effective and sustainable. The overlapping nature of NTDs should be clearly stated in the final post-2015 development agenda, state the co-signers of the policy brief.

Investing in the control and elimination is a “best buy” and one of the most cost-effective health interventions in global health. For approximately US $0.50 per person per year, we can treat and prevent these diseases and in turn improve nutrition, education, maternal and child health, and HIV outcomes, and set the stage for sustainable and inclusive economic growth.

UN Secretary General has already echoed the importance of NTD control and elimination efforts in the fight against poverty. “I share your view that poverty reduction and the elimination of NTDs go hand-in-hand,” he said in October, 2013.

NTDs have already been included in the UN High Level Panel’s final 2013 report on the post-2015 agenda; in the World Health Assembly’s May 2014 resolution on health and the post-2015 development agenda; and, just last week in the UN’s Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals’ final draft of the Proposed Sustainable Development Goals and Targets for the post-2015 agenda.

While the inclusion of NTDs in the preceding reports and resolutions is a very promising sign, government leaders must continue to support the inclusion of health goals and targets for NTDs during the Member State negotiations throughout the coming year. This continued support will help build momentum leading up to the final post-2015 development agenda and its ultimate approval in the fall of 2015.

To read the full brief, click here. And to read more about NTDs and the post-2015 development agenda, click here.

New Article: How NTDs could reshape the Global Health Agenda

Global Health, post 2015, poverty, ,

 

women and children wash their clothes in a river nearby the Pallgant school

Photo by Esther Havens

 

The United Nation’s (UN’s) Millennium development Goals (MDGs) are set to expire in just over a year. What comes next – the post-2015 development agenda – will be critical in determining the future of global health priorities and funding. In a recent PLOS NTDs article, James Smith and Emma Michelle Taylor discuss why NTDs should be included in the post-2015 development agenda and highlight the advances made in NTD funding and recognition in spite of their omission from the MDGs.

There is a clear case for including NTDs in the post-2015 development agenda. NTD control and elimination significantly improve the health of the most marginalized communities, enhance economic performance and contribute to broader development goals included in the MDGs. In fact, not addressing NTDs could undermine efforts to reach virtually all MDGs.

But the cross-cutting nature of NTDs may actually keep these diseases from taking center stage in the post-2015 agenda, the authors argue. In the article, they say the very nature of NTDs – the fact that these diseases are “relatively invisible cross-cutting drivers of poverty” – has limited efforts to focus on them.

Despite this difficulty, the global community is taking notice and is addressing NTDs in unprecedented ways. The authors note that the absence of NTDs from MDG 6: combat HIV/Aids malaria and other diseases, “served as a call to arms for a group of concerned stakeholders, who have since contributed to a series of landmark initiatives that have placed NTDs firmly on the international agenda.”

The two most recent initiatives, which include the London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases and a milestone World Health Organization (WHO) resolution on NTDs, helped secure unprecedented funding from traditional and non-traditional sources.

“Already the fruits of the public-private partnership approach are being felt, with gains in NTD control providing hope that elimination may be a possibility for many of the diseases. The success has been such that the WHO Secretary General, Dr. Margaret Chan, recently referred to the story of the NTDs in the 21st century as one of rags to riches,” Smith and Taylor explain.

So what can we expect from a post-2015 agenda? Will NTDs be included and will this make a difference? The authors note that while NTDs are cross-cutting drivers of poverty, there has been a limited effort to realize synergies between NTDs and other areas like education, health poverty and gender. But looking forward, there’s reason to be hopeful.

As Smith and Taylor mention, “The recently-released report of the high-level panel on the post-2015 development agenda includes an ‘illustrative goal’ for health that will ‘ensure healthy lives’ and explicitly names NTDs alongside HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and non-communicable diseases.”

In closing, the authors state that by including NTDs in the post-2015 agenda, the international community could be signaling a new shift in international development – one that focuses on the “institutions we need to manage the complex social, economic, environmental, and health systems that interact to shape future development.”

To read the full article, click here. And to read more about the Global Network’s role in the post-2015 development agenda, click here.