New WHO report and resolution on Neglected Tropical Diseases

20 Feb 13

On 28th January 2013, the 132nd Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended a resolution on all 17 neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), including rabies, to the 66th World Health Assembly. This resolution will be put before the World Health Assembly in May 2013, with the hope that it will be adopted.

The resolution builds on the growing momentum in NTD control, following a dramatic shift in the strategy to control them. In 2005, a WHO strategic and technical meeting in Berlin recommended an integrated approach to the control of diseases of poverty, and a move away from looking at individual diseases in isolation. Since this date, increased engagement and commitment from member states and public-private partnerships with investment from pharmaceutical companies has unlocked resources for, and much progress in the fight against NTDs.

The first WHO Report on NTDs, published in October 2010, highlighted the huge burden that these diseases exert on developing countries and the successes that partnerships had demonstrated in their control. Inspired by a WHO roadmap laying out the vision for the prevention, control, elimination and eradication of NTDs in 2012, a diverse group of public and private partners came together and endorsed the London Declaration. This commits the partners to sustaining and expanding the progress made so far, with substantial further donations of funds and pharmaceuticals promised.

Last month, a 2nd report on NTDs from the WHO, entitled Sustaining the drive to overcome the global impact of neglected tropical diseases, brings publicity to the recent unprecedented impacts on NTDs worldwide, enabled by a regular supply of quality-assured, cost-effective medicines and support from global partners. “With this new phase in the control of these diseases, we are moving ahead towards achieving universal health coverage with essential interventions,” says Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO. “The challenge now is to strengthen capacity of national disease programmes in endemic countries and streamline supply chains to get the drugs to the people who need them, when they need them.”

The report also highlights an urgent need to strengthen human resources and to integrate education, agriculture and veterinary public health into disease control programmes that have previously concentrated only on human health.The resolution proposed to the WHA for consideration in May, sets targets for eradication of two diseases (guinea-worm disease and yaws) and 16 targets for global or regional elimination of a further 9 diseases, all by 2020.

On the subject of rabies, the report notes that it has been eliminated or severely reduced in several countries, due to mass vaccination. The roadmap will establish a global control strategy for rabies in humans and dogs and has set targets for regional elimination in Latin America by 2015 and in SEAsia and the Western Pacific by 2020. The first part of the elimination plan for SEAsia is to reduce by half the estimated human deaths caused by rabies by 2016. Elimination (by 2020) will then be followed by certfifiation as rabies-free and efforts to maintain this status will begin.

Several of the NTDs in the report (including dengue and rabies) have the potential for epidemic spread, and the report notes that the world needs to change its reactive approach and implement sustainable preventive measures. It urges member states to ensure country ownership of prevention, control, elimination and eradication programmes; expansion and implementation of interventions and advocate for predictable, long-term international financing to finance activities related to control, capacity strengthening and achieve the roadmap targets.“[The resolution] stands as evidence to the growing commitment of Member States and public and private partners in reaching targets outlined in the 2012 WHO roadmap and further elaborated in the recently launched 2nd WHO report on neglected tropical diseases. “ said Dr Lorenzo Savioli, Director of the Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Summarized by Louise Taylor from WHO news articles on the resolution and the second report on NTDs (from where you can download the full report).