USAID's NTD Program
About the Neglected Tropical Disease Program
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| Two boys stand in a pool of water near their home in Uganda. Standing water and irrigation streams are home to the snails that carry Schistosomiasis, also known as bilharzia, one of the seven diseases targeted by USAID’s NTD Program. Source: Andrea Peterson |
More than 1 billion people worldwide suffer from one or more painful, debilitating tropical diseases that disproportionately impact poor and rural populations, cause severe sickness and disability, compromise mental and physical development, contribute to childhood malnutrition, reduce school enrollment, and hinder economic productivity.
Seven of these neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) can be controlled and treated by providing safe and effective drug treatments to individuals in affected communities. This approach is called preventive chemotherapy and can be used to target large populations of at-risk individuals through mass drug administration. Many of the NTD drugs are provided through generous donations from several pharmaceutical companies; other drugs are purchased and donated to countries by various donors, including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Our History
USAID’s NTD Program was launched in 2006 in response to a congressional earmark of $15 million per year. The program began in five “fast-track” countries (Ghana, Niger, Mali, Uganda, and Burkina Faso) and was one of the first global efforts to integrate existing disease-specific treatment programs to control the targeted diseases. In 2007, USAID’s NTD Program expanded further to include Haiti, Sierra Leone, and Southern Sudan.
Building on the early success of the program, in February 2008, former President George W. Bush announced an NTD initiative and pledged to make additional funding available for integrated NTD control.
In recognition of the U.S. Government’s commitment to tackling these diseases of poverty, former President Bush’s announcement has been followed by several high-level commitments to NTDs:
- At its meeting in Japan in July 2008, the Group of Eight (G8) declared it would help control and eliminate several major NTDs by reaching at least 75 percent of people in the most affected countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
- In September 2008, the U.K. announced a £50 million commitment over the next five years to fight NTDs.
- In January 2009, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a new grant of $34 million to prevent and treat NTDs.
The high-level U.S. Government commitment continued when Congress increased fiscal year (FY) 2009 funding for NTDs to $25 million per year. With a commitment to rapidly expand the program, Cameroon, Togo, Bangladesh, and Nepal were added in 2009. Funding for NTDs was again increased in the FY 2010 budget, and, as a result, USAID will continue to scale up the program this year with $65 million earmarked for NTDs.
NTDs in the Global Health Initiative
On May 5, 2009, President Barack Obama announced the Global Health Initiative (GHI), a new comprehensive global health strategy to address some of the most pressing global health challenges. Along with enhanced efforts to address child and maternal health and family planning, President Obama expressed strong support for tackling NTDs.
The President’s commitment to NTDs was further demonstrated this year with the Presidential Foreign Operations FY 2011 Budget Request, which included $155 million for NTDs – the largest presidential request for NTDs. The FY 2011 State/Foreign Operations Appropriations bill was passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee in July 2010 and included $100 million for NTDs. The final FY 2011 appropriation for NTDs is expected by early 2011.
Making an Impact
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USAID’s highly successful NTD Program is making a large-scale, cost-effective contribution to the global effort to reduce the economic and epidemiological burden of NTDs. In its first year of implementation, the Program distributed more than 36 million treatments to more than 14 million people. Building on the success and lessons learned in the first year, approximately 57 million treatments were delivered to more than 27 million people in the second year of the program.
To date, the Program has delivered more than 255 million treatments to approximately 60 million people.
Targets
USAID’s NTD goals under the Global Health Initiative:
- Reduce the prevalence of seven NTDs by 50 percent among 70 percent of affected population.
Contribute to:
- Elimination of onchocerciasis in the Americas by 2016
- Elimination of lymphatic filariasis globally by 2020
- Elimination of leprosy
Looking Ahead
To ensure the availability and affordability of the drugs that will be required for scale-up of integrated NTD control under the Global Health Initiative, USAID is actively engaged in negotiating and managing partnerships with pharmaceutical industry partners regarding NTD drug supply and demand forecasting.
With sustained action for three to five years, the integrated approach to controlling the seven targeted NTDs will enable countries to significantly reduce the current burden and to potentially eliminate some of these debilitating diseases. This approach provides an opportunity to attack a root cause of poverty that affects a significant proportion of the world’s population.