New Global Alliance Unveils Integrated Strategy to Combat Neglected Diseases
Monday, September 10, 2007
Blueprint to Control Diseases Afflicting 2.7 Billion Poorest People Creates Global Disease Control and Poverty Reduction Model A “blueprint” for controlling and potentially eliminating the seven, most common neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) afflicting the “poorest of the poor”?2.7 billion people living on less than $2 per day?has been published in the Sept. 6, 2007 edition of The New England
Journal of Medicine. The peer-reviewed article details an integrated control strategy
established by the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases (Global Network). The Global Network is an alliance of the leading organizations dedicated to reducing poverty and improving global health through tropical disease control. The NTD control and prevention strategy centers on mass treatment with a safe, effective and affordable “rapid impact package” comprised of four drugs, delivered at a cost of only 50 cents per person, per year?a fraction of the cost of antiviral treatment for HIV/AIDS and multidrug therapy for tuberculosis, according to the paper.
“This NTD control blueprint represents a historic assault on diseases of poverty in
developing countries and will help catalyze international efforts to address the Millennium
Development Goals established by the United Nations,” said lead author, Peter J. Hotez, M.D., Ph.D., President of the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Professor and Chair of Microbiology, Immunology and Tropical Medicine at George Washington University.
In addition to Dr. Hotez, the authors of the paper represent several founding organizations of the Global Network, including: David H. Molyneux, Ph.D., D.Sc., Lymphatic Filariasis Support Centre (Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine); Alan Fenwick, Ph.D., Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (Imperial College of London); Sonia Erlich Sachs, M.D. and Jeffrey D. Sachs, Ph.D., Earth Institute at Columbia University; and Jacob Kumaresan, Ph.D., formerly of the International Trachoma Initiative.
Continue reading “New Global Alliance Unveils Integrated Strategy to Combat Neglected Diseases in The New England Journal of Medicine“
