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x THIRD WHO REPORT ON NEGLECTED TROPICAL DISEASES ***
While the emphasis is on long-term financing needs, the report also charts remarkable
and accelerating progress. Further momentum comes from the stepped-up commitment
of many endemic countries that now see an end in sight and are determined to get there.
Well over 70 countries are implementing or ready to kick-off their master plans for the
integrated and accelerated control of these diseases. Verification that lymphatic filariasis
has been eliminated has begun in six countries. Sustained efforts by a network of African
countries have reduced the incidence of human African trypanosomiasis by 90%. At the
end of 2014, 27 countries had already achieved the WHO target of 75% treatment coverage
of school-age children to prevent soil-transmitted helminthiases. Since 2006, over 5 billion
anti-parasitic treatments have been delivered. During 2012 and 2013, the pharmaceutical
industry donated 2.5 billion treatments. Over 800 million people were treated in 2012 alone.
These outstanding results are a tribute to what committed governments, working with
equally committed and enthusiastic partners, led by WHO, can do to relieve vast human
misery, distribute economic gains more evenly, and free masses of people long trapped
in poverty, from one generation to the next. Universal health coverage is one of the most
powerful social equalizers among all policy options. Setting this as a future goal for diseases
that affect so many can contribute to the social stability and resilience to shocks that our
troubled world so visibly and badly needs. In other words, when countries and their partners
invest in these diseases, they get a windfall of benefits in return.
Dr Margaret Chan
Director-General
World Health Organization