A coalition of governments, pharmaceutical companies, and philanthropic organizations launched an ambitious initiative to eliminate a group of neglected tropical diseases that collectively affect more than a billion people, predominantly in low-income countries.
A Roadmap to Elimination
The initiative combines mass drug administration, vector control, improved sanitation, and community health education into an integrated strategy targeting diseases including lymphatic filariasis, trachoma, and schistosomiasis. Funding commitments from public and private partners total billions of dollars over the program's ten-year timeframe.
These diseases cause immense suffering among the world's most vulnerable populations, yet they are largely preventable and treatable. The tools exist; what has been lacking is the sustained commitment to use them at scale.
Previous elimination campaigns have demonstrated that concerted global action can succeed, with smallpox and near-elimination of polio serving as inspiring precedents.