Accelerating work to overcome the global impact of neglected tropical diseases – A roadmap for implementation

Overview

Neglected tropical diseases are a diverse group of diseases with distinct characteristics found mainly among the poorest populations of the world.

The 17 diseases targeted by WHO share a common stranglehold on those populations left furthest behind by development: they perpetuate poverty. Most of those who suffer from more than one of these diseases at any given time are also mired in poverty, perpetuating a doubly intolerable and unacceptable situation destined to live in permanent disability.

The international community is committed to rooting out these diseases. The roadmap proposes the way forward.

Although the global financial crisis may negatively impact the resources available to support control and elimination programmes, evidence has shown that the cost of treating one or more neglected tropical diseases is negligible compared with that associated with other diseases.

Evidence clearly shows that overcoming neglected tropical diseases makes economic and development sense, and that the prospects for achieving the roadmap’s targets are ambitious but well-founded.

Scaling up interventions will bolster recent progress made in tackling neglected tropical diseases and result in the eradication of dracunculiasis and yaws and the elimination of several others by 2015 and 2020.

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• Accelerating work to overcome the global impact of neglected tropical diseases. A roadmap for implementation
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