NTDs in the News

3.12.10
Peace Through Vaccine Diplomacy
Dr. Peter Hotez, President, Sabin Vaccine Institute
Can vaccinations help to resolve conflicts and nuture diplomacy? Later this month, Indonesia, the world’s most populous Islamic country, will host U.S. President Obama, a visit that could establish important scientific ties between the United States and Indonesia and implement a potentially powerful piece of vaccine diplomacy.
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3.3.10
Drug shows promise against river blindness
ANI
Closantel, an old drug used to treat sheep and cattle infected with liver fluke, may prove effective in fighting river blindness in humans, a major cause of infection-related blindness, according to a new study.
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3.3.10
Fighting Deadly Neglected Tropical Diseases: Opportunities to Expand U.S. Impact in Control of NTDs
Doctors Without Borders
Over 1 billion people are infected with one of the 14 diseases defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). These are the most common infections in the 2.7 billion people living on less than $2 a day and affects those often marginalized and forgotten by governments, left to suffer in silence. NTDs are diverse but all cause severe disability or death, and bring a major economic burden on endemic countries.
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3.3.10
Trachoma casts shadow over Aboriginal communities
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
A study has found that an eye disease that causes blindness is still a big problem in Indigenous communities.
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2.2.10
The President’s Budget: Neglected Tropical Diseases
ONE
In a period of intense fiscal restraint, domestically and globally, there are going to be many global health and development advocates that are displeased by the release of President Obama’s FY2011 Budget Request today. But as one of ONE’s newest employees—and only a month out from my previous job doing policy work for the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases—I have to admit that I’m quietly wearing my party hat after seeing President Obama’s request of $155 million for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).
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2.2.10
Extra Money for Science in Obama’s Budget
New York Times
Calming fears that scientific research would be hurt by the Obama administration, the budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services was $81.3 billion, up from $79.6 billion a year ago. And the National Institutes of Health saw its budget request rise by $1 billion, to $32 billion, more than was requested last year.
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2.2.10
Gates Foundation Commits $13 Million to Eliminate Two Tropical Diseases
Philanthropy News Digest
The Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has announced a five-year, $13 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to improve efforts to eliminate two parasitic diseases, elephantiasis (lymphatic filariasis) and river blindness (onchocerciasis), in the developing world.
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2.2.10
Obama budget boosts funds for tropical diseases
Reuters
President Barack Obama's budget proposes a unique new initiative -- battling some tropical diseases not just to improve health but as a national security strategy.
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2.1.10
White House Proposes 9% Increase in Global-Health Funding
Wall Street Journal
The Obama administration proposed a 9% increase in funding for global health needs in its fiscal 2011 budget, pledging to spend more to combat preventable diseases and reduce deaths among women and children at a time when it is tightening its belt elsewhere.
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2.1.10
Obama Budget Aids War Zones, Global Health Programs
Bloomberg
The Obama administration proposed to boost funding on global health work and civilian and counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq in its spending plan for the State Department and related programs.
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2.1.10
The Gates Foundation’s expansion of its support, and the thinking that lies behind it
TropIKA.net
The Gates Foundation becomes ever more influential in research and control efforts that address the infectious diseases of poverty. At the World Economic Forum, Bill and Melinda Gates announced a new $10 billion, 10-year commitment to support vaccine development and delivery – the largest commitment the foundation has ever made.
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1.25.10
Parasites: ‘Tropical’ Diseases Are Common in Arctic Dwellers, a Survey Finds
New York Times
The kind of worm and protozoan infections that are often called neglected “tropical” diseases are also common among aboriginal peoples living in the Arctic, according to a recent survey.
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1.22.10
Gandhi's Hookworms
Foreign Policy Magazine
Toward the end of his life, Mohandas Gandhi suffered from a hookworm infection.
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12.26.09
Gifts with global meaning
The New York Times
Were the kids demanding the latest murder-and-mayhem video game? Do your loved ones have all the neckties/bottles of perfume/sweaters that can be used in a lifetime? Tired of celebrating spiritual holidays with crass commercialism?
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12.24.09
Lack of R&D and scale up of treatment plagues patients with neglected diseases
China.org.cn
More than 400 million people are at risk for the neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) visceral leishmaniasis (kala azar), sleeping sickness, Chagas disease, and Buruli ulcer. The first three are the deadliest of all the NTDs, and all four have been highlighted by the World Health Organization (WHO) as especially troublesome due to treatment and diagnostic tools that are old, ineffective, or worst, simply non-existent, and patient populations stuck in remote or insecure areas with little or no access to already limited available treatments.
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12.17.09
How to Cure 1 Billion People?--Defeat Neglected Tropical Diseases
Scientific American Magazine
Key Concepts
A group of seven tropical diseases, mostly caused by parasitic worms, afflict a billion impoverished people worldwide. They seldom kill directly but cause lifelong misery that stunts children’s growth, leaves adults unable to function to their fullest, and heightens the risk of other diseases.
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12.9.09
I'm Giving Up My 37th Birthday!
Huffington Post
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water." - LORAN EISELY I'm giving up my 37th Birthday and it has nothing to do with vanity or nearing the big 4-0. I couldn't care less about numbers as they pertain to my age. I do, however, care about age when it pertains to those throughout the world who don't make it to their 37th birthdays because of a lack of clean drinking water and proper sanitation.
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12.9.09
Mass Drug Administration; Not a Cure, But a Necessary Treatment
Huffington Post
Right now, American public school children are getting their H1N1 vaccines in nurse's offices all across the United States. And while swine flu is a concern here in Rwanda where I live, the impact of Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) on the population's well-being and productivity is much greater and cannot be compared to anything in the States.
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12.7.09
WHO, partners review river blindness elimination progress in Africa
African Press Organization
TUNIS, Tunisia, December 7, 2009/African Press Organization (APO)/ — The governing board of the World Health Organization (WHO) African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC), comprising Health Ministers of the participating countries, representatives of donor countries and institutions and other health development partners meets in the Tunisian capital to review progress towards elimination of the scourge of river blindness from the continent.
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12.2.09
£10m ($16.6 million) funding boost to eliminate elephantiasis globally
Eureka Alert
The Centre for Neglected Tropical Diseases (CNTD) at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine has been awarded £10 million by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) to support endemic countries in tackling lymphatic filariasis (LF) – a crippling disease more commonly known as elephantiasis.
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