At the Mandela 100 Global Citizen Festival which held in Johannesburg, South Africa on Sunday, 2nd December 2018, leading philanthropists alongside African and European leaders announced that more than US$150m funding was to be used to tackle neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) largely unknown in Western countries, yet affected up to 1.5 billion people.
These neglected tropical diseases such as blinding trachoma, intestinal worms, and river blindness affect poor and marginalised people. They prevent children from going to school and can disrupt the most productive years of an adult’s life if affected. There has been a lot of efforts to eradicate these diseases which have yielded great results, but a lot more people are still in need of treatment.
The $150m pledged at the festival will help tackle the diseases to a large extent, treating and protecting some 300m people from the effects of these diseases based on the average cost of delivering the necessary drugs of 50 US Cents per treatment. And thanks to pharmaceutical companies making free drug donations to the cause, for every aid dollar invested in the distribution of medicines, $26 worth of donated drugs will be leveraged, making this the largest public-private partnership in global health.
A group of funders from the Audacious projects donated $105m in funding for NTDs and over $7 billion in total commitments were pledged to support the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The commitments were made by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; the governments of Mozambique, Belgium and Botswana; and a consortium of private donors associated with the philanthropic venture, the END Fund.
Precious Mukelabai, a community health volunteer from western Zambia opened the financial announcements for NTDs during the festival. As a dedicated community health worker, Mukelabai works relentlessly connecting people with services. At the festival, she spoke about her aunt who had suffered from blinding trachoma for many years and how she recently helped to connect her with a surgeon who operated on her eyes to prevent blindness. “Now my auntie has her smile again”, she said.
The intentions of leading philanthropists, African and European leaders to fight these neglected tropical diseases, backed by these donations, will help keep more people alive and prevent a further spread of NTDs in Africa. The living conditions of people who suffer from these diseases should also be looked into to prevent future recurrence.
