WHO encourages domestic healthcare investments to alleviate tropical diseases

By boosting domestic funding for healthcare, afflicted countries will be better positioned to eradicate rabies and other neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) that maim, disfigure or kill over 1.5 billion people worldwide.  In the recently released Third report on NTDs, entitled “Investing to overcome the global impact of NTDs”, the World Health Organization (WHO) urges affected countries to increase their spending by as little as $1 per person annually until the year 2030 to help alleviate the burden of NTDs and improve domestic health care outcomes.

This report is third in a series of publications initiated by WHO in 2010 that were designed to raise further awareness about NTDs, as well as evaluate the strength of current elimination strategies. In this third report, the WHO outlines the specific funding goals that must be reached to achieve eradication and to implement universal healthcare coverage in affected nations by 2030.

NTDs are a diverse group of tropical diseases that receive less attention and funding than the three big diseases affecting tropical, low-income nations—HIV/AIDs, tuberculosis and malaria—but cause a significant healthcare burden that affects the world’s poorest people .  Currently WHO lists 17 diseases as NTDs, which includes rabies, but the list also encompasses diseases such as guinea worm disease, river blindness, dengue fever and sleeping sickness—illnesses that rarely are found in wealthy countries and receive little media attention.  These NTDs are treatable, but often the local resources directed at prevention or care are minimal, leaving poor countries looking to the international aid community to tackle these blights. 

Success in overcoming NTDs is being considered a “litmus test” of universal health coverage in endemic countries, and the roadmap for NTD control sets goals for global eradication or global elimination by 2020 for six of the diseases. Elimination goals for rabies are regional: Latin America by 2015 and South East Asia and the Western Pacific regions by 2020.

This report provides targets for the investment needed to achieve the Roadmap’s targets by 2020 and universal coverage against NTDs by 2030 for 12 of the 17 NTDs, but explicitly excludes dracunculiasis (already targeted for elimination in 2015) and the 4 neglected zoonotic diseases (including rabies) which it says will be covered in future updates.

The WHO report urges developing nations, especially those middle-income countries with accelerating economies, to begin to shoulder more of the responsibility for NTD healthcare, and encourages nations where the 17 NTDs are endemic to invest as little as 0.1% of their current level of total health care spending, a figure adding up to $34 billion USD over the next 16 years.

While there has been considerable progress in reducing NTD prevalence, sustained increases to current healthcare budgets is seen as the most cost-effective and most promising way to implement programs for disease prevention and control in endemic countries.  The WHO analysis projected that $2.9 billion USD must be allocated for the first 5 years (2015-2020) with a slightly reduced amount of $1.6 billion USD needed for the 2021-2030, a decrease in called-for investments that reflects the projected, immediate eradication of a select few NTDs that would then permit reduced health care commitments in the later years.

The WHO report also projects how increased domestic investments will encourage the international community to renew and expand its pledges for healthcare aid when governments of afflicted countries actively demonstrate a commitment to fighting NTDs by earmarking funds specifically for these diseases.

Contributed by Laura Baker, volunteer newsletter contributor for GARC, in part based on this Reuters news story. There is more information from the WHO on this report here, and you can download it here.