HOW TO BEAT Dr. Maria Rebollo Polo explains why the fight against Neglected Tropical Diseases is vital for the combat against COVID-19 and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) NTDs
I n this interview, Dr. Maria Rebollo Polo, Team Leader for the Expanded Special Project for Elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases (ESPEN) at the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Regional Office for Africa, discusses how directing more investments to combat Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) can help in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and achieving the SDGs. OPEC Fund Quarterly : Can you tell us about NTDs and how they impact communities across Africa? Maria Rebollo Polo: Neglected tropical diseases affect about 600 million people on the African continent, causing more than 500,000 annual deaths. They are a global problem: NTDs pose a threat to more than 1.5 billion people worldwide, making them one of the biggest health problems in the developing world. They disable, disfigure and sometimes kill – keeping children out of school and adults out of work. They imprison afflicted communities in a vicious cycle of poverty and disease, which also creates a significant barrier to achieving the SDGs. But there is also hope. NTDs are curable when you detect them early, and they are preventable. They can be
controlled and eliminated by applying preventive chemotherapy through Mass Drug Administration (MDA). MDA involves giving treatment to every member of a population or every person living in a defined geographical area regardless of whether or not they are infected. OFQ : How does ESPEN contribute to fighting NTDs? What has the program achieved so far? MRP: ESPEN has made it its mission to accelerate the elimination of the most common NTDs in Africa that can be prevented and treated by preventive chemotherapy delivered through MDA, complemented by the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) program, the most cost-effective elimination strategy against NTDs. Since its launch in May 2016, ESPEN has worked with national and international partners to leverage US$17.8 billion in drug donations from pharmaceutical companies to expand coverage and access to treatment, strengthen healthcare systems and provide universal health coverage of NTD interventions in Africa. Our goal is the final elimination of these devastating diseases. ESPEN aims to equip all
stakeholders with evidence-based data to improve decision-making and target investments efficiently, and has therefore established the ESPEN Portal, a global system for data collection. In the past few years much has been accomplished: African governments, with the support of the ESPEN Partnership and an OPEC Fund grant, have protected 450 million of the 600 million people affected by NTDs until 2020, demonstrating that investments in ESPEN deliver significant impact. ESPEN reduces the cost of treating all five of the high-burden diseases it targets to just US$0.50 per person annually. To support its goal to improve the effective use of donated medicines through enhanced supply chain management, ESPEN has identified gaps in supply chains in 45 countries and recovered and repurposed about 930 million tablets worth more than US$106 million from 2017 to 2020. Through the ESPEN partnership we have managed to improve access to data, scale up treatment and enhance the capacity to effectively deliver NTD interventions across 45 countries in Africa. Two diseases have been extinguished as a public health problem from four
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