King's College Global Health Seminar - Neglected Tropical Diseases: the challenges of elimination in a changing world

This inaugural talk is part of a termly series supported by King's College, Cambridge-Africa and Wellcome Trust-Cambridge Centre for Global Health Research and will focus on crosscutting issues in global health within low-income countries.

How do we eliminate a disease of poverty? This inaugural talk is part of a termly series focusing on crosscutting issues in global health within low-income countries. This series aims to encourage debate about what, if any, our role should be in improving the human condition during a time of growing health inequalities between wealthy and poor states.

The theme for this year’s three-part series is neglected tropical diseases (NTD);  NTDs comprise a set of 20 diseases afflicting more than 1.9 billion people worldwide, who mostly reside in areas lacking safe water and adequate sanitation.

In this seminar, Prof. David Molyneux will delineate the multifactorial challenges encountered during NTD elimination efforts. The seminar will be split in two parts: 45 minutes of presentation and 45 minutes for questions/debate. This seminar is intended for academics and students from all disciplines. 

Please register here.

Abstract

Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) have been included within the Health Targets of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, recognizing their impact as impediments to health of the poorest 1-2 billion. Over the past decade there has been increased resources to implement NTD programmes and for both basic and operational research reflecting the need for new tools but also the need to address the challenges of increasing uptake of donated medicines in complex and diverse settings. The World Health Organization created a Roadmap in 2012 to achieve certain targets for elimination and eradication by 2020. The challenges that elimination programmes face and the research required to accelerate progress will be discussed in the light of geopolitical events, environmental change, competition for health resources as health policy changes and new biological information—all factors which impact on rapidly approaching targets. The elimination “end game” and eradication defined as “zero global incidence of infection” poses a unique challenge, i.e. how do we prove a negative? This target must be achieved in remote, conflict affected and geographically difficult regions with limited health services and communication. This talk will discuss the success to date, the research required to address the challenges and the current global health policy environment.