Kigali, 1 September 2009 -- WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Luis Sambo, has proposed a comprehensive package of interventions to address Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) in the African Region.

Dr Sambo unveiled his proposals today in a report to the 59th session of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa taking place in Kigali, Rwanda.

The Regional Director's nine-point action plan to guide Member States and partners in addressing NTDs include: strengthening health systems; streamlining and strengthening national systems of managing medicines; strengthening national ownership and leadership of NTD control programmes; reinforcing supportive activities for transmission control and community-based interventions, and the intensification of interventions for eradication of Guinea worm disease.

Other action points include scaling up operational and clinical research; intensified advocacy in support of prioritization of NTD interventions; and the reorganization and strengthening of surveillance, monitoring and evaluation.

Dr Sambo stated that, in spite of the several challenges hampering the effective implementation of NTD programmes, Member States were making appreciable progress in tackling these diseases. As of 2007, leprosy had been eliminated in all 46 Member States at national level, the prevalence of Guinea worm had been reduced from 3.5 million cases in 1985 to 3770 cases in 2007, and the prevalence of lymphatic filariasis had also been brought down significantly through coordinated control efforts involving the provision of preventive chemotherapy to more than 53 million people in the Region through a strategy of mass drug administration.

NTDs - which affect almost exclusively poor and marginalized people living in the rural parts of low-income countries - have, in the past, not been given adequate attention, hence the term "neglected". Recent efforts at the global and regional levels are aimed at increasing political attention to and programme support for this group of diseases at all levels.

The NTDs most commonly reported in the African Region are Guinea worm disease, leprosy, lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, human African trypanosomiasis, schistosomiasis, soil-transmitted helminthiases, Buruli ulcer, yaws and other endemic treponematoses, leishmaniasis, and blinding trachoma.

For more information, please contact :

Technical contact: Dr Masresha Balcha: Email: masreshab [at] afro.who.int (masreshab[at]afro[dot]who[dot]int) +47 241 39314

Media contact: Samuel Ajibola; Email: ajibolas [at] afro.who.int (ajibolas[at]afro[dot]who[dot]int) Tel: +47 241 39378