Impressions from the World Health Assembly

At the end of May, representatives of the 194 World Health Organisation (WHO) Member States met at the Palais des Nations of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.

More than 2000 delegates arrived from all corners of the world to debate and decide on the ongoing and future working programme of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The six day agenda was packed with discussions on many important global health issues, including monitoring progress towards the health-related Millennium Development Goals by the year 2015, solutions to overcome the challenges of the last stages of global polio eradication, the importance of intersectoral collaboration, dedicated programmes helping countries to improve access of the entire population to health care and the acknowledgement that a healthy population is absolutely key to sustainable economic growth of all countries, whether rich or poor.

Alongside these critical topics, the 66th WHA was a historic event for rabies. Rabies is now officially listed by the WHO as a neglected tropical disease (NTD).

On Saturday 27 May 2013, the WHO Member States adopted the ‘Resolution on the prevention, control, elimination and eradication of neglected tropical diseases’.

Rabies sadly fits the criteria of a neglected tropical disease, being a disease of poor and vulnerable people whose deaths are rarely reported. It primarily affects remote rural communities where measures for rabies control and prevention have never been implemented.

Severe under-reporting has contributed to the limited mobilisation of resources from the national and international community to better tackle control and elimination of dog-mediated rabies.

So why is the NTD classification of rabies considered to be a historical breakthrough? What does it imply for the people and animals suffering from continued rabies threats?

1) This is only the third time in the history of WHO that a resolution mentions rabies at all (namely in 1950, 2012, 2013).

2) The adopted resolution represents an unprecedented political commitment from the international community, a call to all countries to put an end to the deadly neglect of NTDs, such as rabies.

3) The resolution urges all countries to particularly prioritize NTD prevention, control, elimination and eradication programmes in their national or regional agendas and calls on international partners to provide sufficient and predictable funding for the fight against those diseases.

It has taken the rabies community several years to attain such leverage for rabies matters at a global level. Finally it is acknowledged that rabies is a deadly, yet fully preventable problem for too many communities and that something needs to be done about it - with high priority.

In conclusion this international commitment has great potential to support the updating and further elaboration of rabies control guidelines and strategies to support countries in starting, progressing and maintaining efforts in rabies control, elimination and prevention.

Now more than ever, we need to be ready to build on this renewed momentum, hoping it will flourish and blossom into a promising future without the major threat of rabies.

Contributed by Lea Knopf, Institutional Relations & Networks for GARC.