Benin is one of several African countries to make significant progress against sleeping sickness. Above, a health professional holds an insect net in front of Bopa Medical Centre. ©Eric Lafforgue
WHO is following a 10-year roadmap, launched last year, to fight neglected tropical diseases that endanger more than a billion people worldwide.
Contributions to WHO are funding that work, which is already logging notable successes.
In five countries across Africa, forms of sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis) have been eliminated as a public health problem, and despite the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic, wider progress against sleeping sickness has continued.
In Somalia, mass distribution of medicines is protecting children and adults from parasitic worm infections, while Togo has become the latest country to eliminate trachoma, a bacterial infection that can cause blindness. In Iraq, WHO is working with health officials to tackle an outbreak of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever after collaborating with Brazil to quash a resurgence of yellow fever.
WHO recognizes more than 20 neglected tropical diseases, all of which overwhelmingly afflict people who lack regular access to adequate sanitation, basic health infrastructure and health services. Internally displaced people are among those most affected.
Read on for the full details.
With WHO support, countries are vanquishing sleeping sickness
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a technician from a mobile team screens residents of Mpata for sleeping sickness. ©Benoît Marquet/DNDi
After years of effort and with the support of WHO, Benin, Uganda and Rwanda have eliminated at least one of the two types of sleeping sickness (human African trypanosomiasis) as a public health problem.
The life-threatening disease spread by tsetse flies has long afflicted poor, rural communities in West, Central and East Africa.
WHO launched an initiative in 2001 to reinforce control and surveillance of sleeping sickness that has brought about a sharp decline in the disease; from 2000 to 2021, detected cases fell from more than 25 000 to 750.
WHO’s new roadmap for neglected tropical diseases (2021-2030) calls for eliminating transmission of gambiense sleeping sickness – one of two types of the disease – by 2030. In 2020, Togo became the first country to be WHO-validated as free of sleeping sickness, followed by Côte d'Ivoire in 2021.
Read more: Despite COVID-19, progress continues against sleeping sickness
Eliminating worm infections in Somalia
Students in Somalia receive medicines during a recent campaign to end schistosomiasis. ©WHO Somalia/Khurram Sajjad
Somalia carried out an 18-day campaign in May to provide millions of school-aged children with medicines to protect them from schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminth infections.
With the support of WHO, the Somalian government has been mass-administering medicines to stop these parasitic worm infections, diseases linked to poverty that cause chronic ill health.
Health care workers have been visiting schools to reach children and using community-based initiatives to target adults, efforts geared toward reducing the reservoir of infection and interrupting the spread of disease.
The END Fund and the Expanded Special Project for Elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases (ESPEN) have been supporting the interventions.
Togo joins the list of countries to eliminate the eye disease trachoma
A nurse at work in Ghana, one of 13 countries to defeat trachoma. ©WHO
Togo has eliminated trachoma, a neglected tropical eye disease that can cause permanent blindness, as a public health problem.
“Children across the country and their families can now live without the fear of the severe impacts of this preventable disease thanks to sustained control measures,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa, announcing Togo’s achievement in late May.
In reaching the milestone, Togo joins Cambodia, China, Islamic Republic of Iran, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Gambia, Ghana, Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman and Saudi Arabia.
WHO has set 2030 as a target date for global elimination of the disease.
Trachoma remains a public health problem in 43 countries. Caused by bacteria, it affects mainly children in poor, underserved rural communities in Africa, Central and South America, Asia, Australia and the Middle East.
WHO leads effort to fight Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever in Iraq
WHO is working with local officials in Thi Qar, Iraq, to stop Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever. ©WHO
WHO is working with Iraq’s ministry of health to control a recent outbreak of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, a deadly viral disease transmitted by ticks and infected animals.
“WHO is working closely with partners to enhance surveillance and outbreak response interventions in all affected areas,” said Dr Ahmed Zouiten, WHO Representative in Iraq. “We are hoping to educate the population and those working closely with animals and livestock to raise their awareness of the disease, reduce their exposure to the virus and prevent further transmission.”
As of late May, Iraq had reported nearly 100 cases and 18 deaths.
The disease’s name comes from Crimea, where it was first described in 1944, and from Congo, where in 1969 scientists identified the same pathogen.
In Brazil, keeping yellow fever under control
Above: In Brazil, health workers during a yellow fever vaccination campaign. ©PAHO
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has provided extensive support to help Brazil confront outbreaks of yellow fever, supplying vaccines, millions of syringes and more laboratory capacity to detect cases.
The largest outbreak of yellow fever in the past 50 years killed 745 people in Brazil between 2016 and 2018. Through mass-vaccination campaigns, yellow fever deaths dropped to 3 between 2020 and 2021.
A WHO strategy driven by PAHO in the Americas seeks to vaccinate nearly one billion people for the disease by 2026.
"As long as there are unvaccinated people and the virus continues to spread outside endemic areas, the risk of transmission and outbreaks persists," said Sylvain Aldighieri, deputy director of PAHO's Department of Health Emergencies. "The outbreak in Brazil will undoubtedly not be the last to affect a country in the region, but should another one happen, PAHO will be there to help control it, reduce suffering and save lives as it has been doing for 120 years."
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Partners and donors recognized in this feature include the END Fund, the Expanded Special Project for Elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases, (ESPEN), and the WHO Alliance for the Global Elimination of Trachoma by the year 2020 (GET2020).
WHO thanks all governments, organizations and individuals who are contributing to the Organization’s work, and in particular those who have provided fully flexible contributions to maintain a strong, independent WHO.