Tag Archives: United Kingdom

Parliamentary Launch for UKCNTD’s Annual NTD Report

policy, UK government, ,

 

CaptureThis blog was originally posted by the UK Coalition against Neglected Tropical Diseases

Great strides have been made in the battle against Neglected Tropical Diseases but more needs to be done for the 1 in 5 people whose lives are still blighted by these diseases. This is one of the key messages of the 2014-2015 Report for the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases (download http://bit.ly/1DcawHo ), launched at a special meeting in the UK Houses of Parliamentary on Tuesday 24th February.

The report outlines the advances that have been made over the last 12 months to control and eliminate diseases which affect 1.4 billion of the world’s poorest people through mortality, morbidity, disability and stigma.

NTDs are a key barrier to attainment of global development goals and poverty reduction.

Jeremy Lefroy MP, Chairman of the APPG, said:

“Ebola has shone a spotlight on the importance of building health systems to address challenges such as insufficient numbers of qualified health workers and inadequate surveillance and information systems equipped to respond rapidly to new and existing health challenges. Neglected Tropical Diseases affect the world’s poorest communities. They must remain a global health priority post-2015.”

The Coalition makes eight recommendations. The report encourages the UK Government to:

  • maintain its financial commitment to NTD programmes
  • ensure that the Department for International Development (DFID) disability framework and forthcoming health system framework support a response to NTDs
  • ensure that DFID supports country governments to equip their health systems to deliver essential NTD interventions
  • support the full range of research and development for NTDs
  • promote a cross-sectoral NTD response
  • promote the partnership model exemplified by the NTD response
  • continue to champion international investments for NTDs by supporting the inclusion of NTDs in the Sustainable Development Goals
  • highlight the successes achieved with UK government investment and urge other governments and institutions to contribute more to the fight against NTDs

Good, competent, transparent government, specialist expertise and more health workers are all necessary ingredients to combat NTDs.

Helen Hamilton, Chair of the Coalition said;

“In the last five years of this Parliament much progress has been made. Due to the commitment of the government the UK is a world leader in fighting these devastating diseases. But we need to maintain and increase this investment if we are to achieve the international community’s 2020 target of eliminating and controlling these terrible diseases.”

Download the Annual Report from – http://bit.ly/1DcawHo

For further information about this report, please contact 

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.

Continue reading →

New NTD Donor Group Launches in London, UK

NTDs, , ,

 

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!

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.”