President Bush Commits $350 Mill to NTDs

They say timing is everything. Fewer than 24 hours after my colleague David Molyneux’s call to action for increased attention to neglected tropical disease (NTD) control appeared on this blog, President Bush has unveiled a $350 million commitment to fight NTDs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America over the next five years.

This commitment represents a historic step forward in the US’s global health strategy, and a major victory for the NTD advocacy movement. I applaud President Bush for taking leadership on this issue and encouraging other G-8 members, as well as public and private partners and philanthropic foundations, to follow suit.

There is no doubt that the integrated control of NTDs (providing treatment for up to seven of the most common of these infections in one package) will have a rapid and long-lasting impact on almost every facet of life for the billions who have long suffered these debilitating and disabling infections in silence. Together with other effective health and sanitation strategies, NTD control has the potential to unlock economic and educational growth (not to mention improvements in physical and mental well-being) at never-before-seen levels throughout the developing world.

This is truly a cause for great hope. The President’s funding commitment, together with money from Bill and Melinda Gates and other partners such as Geneva Global, will cover almost half of the estimated NTD funding gap over the next seven years. If President Bush’s plea to other donors is successful, perhaps we will after all consign these diseases to history.

For more information on NTDs and to join the fight, visit the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases.

-Dr. Peter Hotez is President of the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Executive Director of the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, based in Washington, DC

A call to my sister, unlike any other

Last night I called my sister in Rwanda. She, her husband and five of their eight children live in a small village about 10 miles outside of Kigali. Normally, our conversations are about 35 minutes and we mostly talk about the children. As a mother she worries about their future, and hopes her two teenage boys can pass the national exam to go to secondary school. Last night something else was on her mind.

A few minutes into the conversation she asked me if President Bush is aware of the poverty and AIDS crisis and in the Rwanda’s small villages. One of her friends suffers from AIDS and travels to the capital to get her medication. My sister said she is only alive because of the medicine from the Americans. I asked her what she thinks about President Bush and Mrs. Bush’s visit to Rwanda. She paused for sometime and said “Our leaders should bring him so we can meet him and tell him about our struggles, they stay in Kigali but life there is very different from ours here in the village’’. I asked her if people in the village know about the presidential campaign in the U.S. She said that those who go to the capital more often say that there are many more Americans than before the genocide. She continued that even the radio talks about America, so everyone has heard at least a little. I asked what she would say to President Bush if she saw him. She said that she would thank him for the AIDS medication that has saved her friend, and ask him to provide more help for education so her two sons can go to a vocational school. I have shared ONE’s commitment to Africa and my work with the campaign with her. She said that since President Bush is about to leave office, that they cannot ask him much. “You who are able to talk to them, speak on our behalf and let them know that we still need their help”, She insisted. She is sure that the president’s visit is a proof that Americans care about Rwandans.

My sister, who is now 50-years old, is the oldest member of my family to survive the genocide. She has always been (more…)

“Sparking” Interest in Malaria

American Idol winner Jordin Sparks is sitting on the concrete floor of the airport here in Accra, Ghana thumbing away at her iPhone when she’s approached for her first autograph. “Of course,” she says, flashing the brillian smile that helped her to win over millions of Idol voters. She’s delighted and a bit surprised to be recognized so far from home.

Jordin has come to Ghana with Malaria No More to participate in the President’s trip to Africa and learn more about malaria, a disease which kills an estimated 900,000 Africans each year, mostly children and pregnant mothers.

Last year’s Idol Gives Back charity special raised $75 million for charities in American and Africa, including $17 million to fight malaria. Malaria No More used part of that money to protect 2 million moms and kids with insecticide treated bed nets in Angola, Madagascar, Mali, Uganda, and Zambia. The President and Mrs. Bush appeared on last year’s Idol Gives Back to thank viewers for their support. Now Jordin’s here to return the favor.

Today, she’ll appear alongside the First Couple at a series of events highlighting the US President’s Malaria Initiative, a $1.2 billion five-year program operating in 15 African countries and is just getting underway here in Ghana. She’ll do a bed net demonstration alongside Mrs. Bush at a malaria clinic on the impoverished fringes of Accra this afternoon. On the drive back from the rehearsal yesterday, our photographer, a cheery Ghanaian named Jeff, said that households in the area are stricken with 1 malaria case every month on average, a consequence of their windowless cinderblock homes and lack of bed nets. Malaria accounts for 22% of deaths among children under five here in Ghana and 44% of health clinic visits.

Tomorrow, we’ll head out into the field with a USAID rep named Bethanne to see the impact of malaria on rural communities and get a look at what they’re doing to fight back. Stay tuned. And if you’d like to help make a different, donate $10 for a bed net at www.MalariaNoMore.org.

-Martin Edlund, Communications Director, Malaria No More

Another Donkey For ONE

Friday night, I had the pleasure of speaking at Donkey Coffee’s ONE concert featuring local talent in Athens, OH: Laura Nadeau, Zach Oden, Jake Householder and Victor Rasgaitis.

This hip fair trade coffee house has been a supporter of ONE for a long time now. I realized how much owner Chris Pyle is committed to educating his community to take action when I saw one of the coffee house’s rooms dedicated to social justice. In it you’ll find a ONE display and literature/posters from other great organizations that Donkey supports like Habitat for Humanity and World Vision.

But, back to the fun part—the music!! Check out this excerpt from Victor’s set and you’ll see how the musicians were able to incorporate the ONE message into the night.

This is just a reminder that whether you are a business owner, musician, teacher, student or none of the above…think outside of the box and you, too, can help make a positive impact on the world.

Here are some of the pictures: Donkey Coffee, Laura Nadeau performing, girl looking at ONE Vote brochure, and coffee mugs, Salinger and ONE.

-Katie Andrews, Regional Field Organizer (KS, OH, MI, MO, WV)

I do some work for the Global Fund

I’m guessing a very large majority of the 1.4 million people getting AIDS treatment, the 3.3 million treated for TB, the 46 million people who have received mosquito nets paid for by the Global Fund, have no idea something called the Global Fund exists.

I’ve been visiting Tanzania this week, and the Global Fund wasn’t very visible, except when President Bush mentioned it. Does that matter?

After all, the Global Fund is just a way to collect the best proposals from countries, choose the best ones based on good science and medicine, and then monitor success. They have no offices in any of the 136 countries where they fund programs.

So if your relatives are getting mosquito nets, it probably doesn’t matter to you. Like most people, John Moses Nyahenge, a computer science student I spoke with in Dar es Salaam, said AIDS and malaria were two of the biggest challenges in Tanzania, that the U.S. is helping, and that he hadn’t heard of the Global Fund.

“They know it’s the US that saved their lives,” said Pam White, who runs the U.S. Agency for International Development in Tanzania, said about Zanzibar island. That’s true. In addition to the presidential initiatives on AIDS and malaria, the US is the largest contributor to the Global Fund (though France and Sweden and dozens of other countries, plus companies, foundations and (RED) buyers do too).

I do some work for the Global Fund, and I’ve met a lot of the staff. They’re fairly normal people, putting in long hours in an office across the highway from an airport. The good they help people do is pretty remarkable – more than 2 million people are alive today who wouldn’t be.

You can read more at strong>www.investinginourfuture.org.

-Seth Amgott

Neglected Tropical Diseases/Appreciated Blog Post

The rhetoric surrounding President Bush’s tour of Africa has certainly been inspirational, but is marked by a common and unfortunate omission. Amid a sea of hopeful images of economic growth, educational opportunity, and life-saving healthcare, the President – like so many other global leaders these days– has displayed an inability to recognize perhaps the most important background factor linking health, wealth, and education in the developing world. The factor I am referring to is the scourge of the neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), a hidden pandemic of the world’s poorest.

Though not killers on the scale of HIV/AIDS and malaria, the NTDs – a group of infections with names like ‘schistosomiasis,’ ‘onchocerciasis,’ and ‘lymphatic filariasis’ that are a mouthful even for those of us who have made a career of fighting them – cause more disability and premature death in Africa than either malaria or tuberculosis, according to the World Health Organization. As a group, the NTDs are the most common infections of the world’s at least one billion poorest inhabitants, affecting 500 million in Africa (compared to 30 million for HIV). Simply put, no progress can be made in development without addressing these infections as well as the “big three” (HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria) which so preoccupy politicians.

Even if you have traveled in the countries hardest hit by NTDs, you may not be familiar with them. They are hidden infections that thrive in the poorest rural and urban populations, often causing grotesquely swollen limbs, distended bellies full of worms, blindness, and mental retardation, all of which lead to severe social stigmatization. They leave adults unable to work, keep kids out of school, add to rates of infant death and low birth weight, and can speed up transmission of the HIV virus, all at alarming rates.

There is good news, however. A package of medications to treat seven of the most common NTDs is available for only 50 cents per person per year – an almost negligible price compared to treatment costs for other major infectious diseases (for example, $400 – 1200 per year to treat a case of HIV). Given this low cost and the hugely positive impacts of treatment, providing medication for NTDs is one of the single most cost-effective investments we can make with our international aid dollars.

While the President’s commitment to African health and development is admirable, we must be careful not to focus solely on the “big three” to the exclusion of other equally devastating diseases. Control of NTDs is within our grasp, and if we truly wish to invest in the future of African development, we must take action now.

For more information on NTDs or to join the fight, please visit the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases.

-Professor David Molyneux, Director of the Lymphatic Filariasis Support Centre based at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and current President of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene