Somewhat less neglected tropical diseases

A year on from the unprecedented gathering of Big Pharma bosses in London, where they promised to help eliminate neglected tropical diseases, two reports suggest progress has indeed been made - but it needs to continueA year ago, the leaders of some of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies arrived for a meeting in London, at Bill Gates' behest, and announced they would all do their bit towards fighting neglected tropical diseases, as I wrote here.Today, two reports give some idea of what has been achieved since, and it looks like a positive story. The companies have delivered 1.2 billion treatments for diseases where treatments exist, which is an increase of 150 million treatments on what they were delivering before. More to the point, perhaps, is that they delivered on every order made by a developing country. According to a report released by organisations including pharma, Gates and NGOs who were involved in the London meeting, twenty-nine countries began receiving albendazole or mebendazole to treat or prevent soil-transmitted helminthiasis, increasing treatments provided with those drugs from 46 million in 2011 to 238 million in 2012. A scorecard has now been developed by the partners to track progress on NTDs towards goals for 2020, which include elimination of guinea worm - Jimmy Carter's crusade and one neglected disease that is likely to disappear. Others among the 10 neglected tropical diseases targeted by the London declaration will be much harder to shift.T...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Blogposts Infectious diseases guardian.co.uk World Health Organisation Global development Society Source Type: news