Soil-transmitted helminths and schistosomiasis are among seventeen WHO prioritized neglected tropical diseases that infect humans. These parasitic infections can be treated using single-dose, safe and often donated drugs. Ethiopia successfully mapped the distribution of these infections nationwide. According to the mapping there are an estimated 38.3 million people living in schistosomiasis end...

OBJECTIVES Neglected tropical diseases (NTD), account for a large proportion of the global disease burden, and their control faces several challenges including diminishing human and financial resources for those distressed from such diseases. Visceral leishmaniasis (VL), the second-largest parasitic killer (after malaria) and an NTD affects poor populations and causes considerable cost to the a...

Over the past decade, systematic reviews and explicit evidence-based approaches have replaced expert opinion as the basis for health policy [1]. In developing countries, the high disease burden coupled with limited financial resources for health requires governments, donors, and the public to choose between competing public health and clinical care options, and increasingly they turn to ‘‘evide...

Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) affect an estimated 1 billion people in 149 countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) prioritised 17 NTDs for control and elimination by 2020 and defined a Road Map to help countries reach these goals. Improved diagnostics for NTDs are essential for guiding treatment strategies at different thresholds of control, interruption of transmission, elimination ...

Research pertaining to the neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) poses specific challenges that are linked to the diseases investigated, infrastructure (or lack thereof), culture, social-ecological systems, conflicting health policies, and ethics requirements, among others [1–3]. In 2010, the European research network on better diagnosis for neglected infectious diseases (NIDIAG consortium; see: h...

Infectious disease control has become an increasingly central component of development policy and practice. In 2000, the UN led Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) targets focused specifically on HIV and other infectious diseases as one dimension of increasing global equity and health. Infectious diseases have progressively become an issue articulated around global “security”, coupled with a he...

More than 2.5 billion individuals living in the tropics are estimated at risk of contracting at least 1 neglected tropical disease. Half of these individuals may be exposed to or have concomitantly ≥2 neglected tropical diseases, including those caused by helminths, schistosomes, parasitic protozoans, and viruses. Although the death toll caused by all neglected tropical diseases is not as high ...

The Neglected Tropical Disease Voucher Program is a Congressionally-mandated program intended to promote approval of products for tropical diseases because it provides spectacular financial compensation consequent to FDA approval of a priority product. Three drug approvals-artemether/lumifantrine for malaria, bedaquiline for multidrug resistant tuberculosis, miltefosine for leishmaniasis-have r...

The blood fluke Schistosoma haematobium causes urogenital schistosomiasis, a neglected tropical disease (NTD) that affects more than 110 million people. Treating this disease by targeted or mass administration with a single chemical, praziquantel, carries the risk that drug resistance will develop in this pathogen. Therefore, there is an imperative to search for new drug targets in S. haematobi...

BACKGROUND Podoconiosis is a neglected tropical disease (NTD) that is prevalent in red clay soil-covered highlands of tropical Africa, Central and South America, and northern India. It is estimated that up to one million cases exist in Ethiopia. This study aimed to estimate the prevalence of podoconiosis in East and West Gojam Zones of Amhara Region in northern Ethiopia. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL...