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WHO launches initiative to help Africa curb neglected tropical diseases

Xinhua, May 24, 2016 Adjust font size:

The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched a program to help African countries reduce the burden of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), it said Tuesday.

The Expanded Special Project for Elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases (ESPEN) will be managed by the WHO Regional Office for Africa, in partnership with African governments, donors, NGOs and pharmaceutical companies. It will run from 2016 to 2020.

WHO's Regional Director for Africa, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, said the program will provide national NTD programs with technical and fund-raising support to help the African countries control and eliminate the five NTDs with the greatest burden on the continent, which collectively affect hundreds of millions of people.

"ESPEN will make sure national NTD programs have the data, expertise and financial resources they need to accelerate the fight against these diseases," Moeti said in a statement received in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

NTDs are a group of diseases that place a constant and heavy burden primarily on the poorest, most marginalized and isolated communities in the world. Forty percent of the global burden of NTDs is in Africa.

Pharmaceutical companies are donating tools and drugs necessary to control and eliminate NTDs to African countries.

Moeti said the program will help equip African countries with the technical and financial capacity to use these tools and drugs, and make them reach "every community in need".

The program will focus on battling five NTDs, namely onchocerciasis, lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis, soil-transmitted helminths and trachoma.

Experts say significant progress has been made over the past three decades in reaching communities affected by NTDs, noting that the world is on the cusp of controlling and potentially eliminating many of these diseases.

ESPEN is launched following the closure of the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control, which during its 20-year mandate made a major contribution to the reduction in onchocerciasis (river blindness) in Africa. Endit