1A9bnbK

14 THIRD WHO REPORT ON NEGLECTED TROPICAL DISEASES
***
This chapter is not intended as a comprehensive review of how NTD control will
contribute to the SDGs, much less how the SDGs will contribute to NTD control. However,
it is worth mentioning two other SDG targets that provide context for the rest of the chapter:
• Target 3.8. to “achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection,
access to quality healthcare services, and access to safe, effective, quality, and
affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all”; and
• Target 13.3. to “improve education, awareness raising and human and institutional
capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early
warning”.
These targets provide a framework for investment in universal coverage against NTDs,
including disease elimination and eradication, as well as the longer-term investments in
vector control that will be required in the context of climate change.
2.2.1 NTD control as a litmus test for universal health coverage
In WHO’s second report on NTDs, the Director-General Dr Margaret Chan wrote:
Overcoming neglected tropical diseases makes sense both for economies and for
development. The prospects for success have never been so strong. Many millions of
people are being freed from the misery and disability that have kept populations mired
in poverty, generation after generation, for centuries. We are moving ahead towards
achieving universal health coverage with essential health interventions for neglected
tropical diseases, the ultimate expression of fairness.This will be a powerful equalizer that
abolishes distinctions between the rich and the poor, the privileged and the marginalized,
the young and the old, ethnic groups, and women and men.
This third report is not the first to suggest that the NTDs are a litmus test for UHC. It is,
however, the first to attempt to translate existing NTD control coverage targets from the
Roadmap into investment targets towards UHC. It describes the process by which coverage
could be extended with priority to populations facing the highest burden of NTDs. This
is discussed in greater detail at the end of the chapter. Of course, UHC is not only or even
primarily about extending the coverage of “vertical” disease programmes – it requires
strengthening of “horizontal” health systems.
Indeed, the extension of UHC to those populations with a high burden of NTDs will
not be limited to NTD interventions. In areas where NTD control is one of the first
health services on offer, it is difficult to separate its benefits from those of health care
more generally. Preventive chemotherapy for NTDs has already served as a pathfinder for
accelerated and cost−effective delivery of primary care. Nigeria recently launched the first
nationwide lymphatic filariasis and malaria co-implementation plan, based on community-