WHO sets its sights on 5 tropical diseases

The World Health Organisation (WHO), United Nations' specialised agency for health, has identified tropical diseases like leprosy, lymphatic filariasis (LF), visceral leishmaniasis (kala azar), soil transmitted helminths (STH) and yaws (contagious non-venereal infection) as priority diseases, which are amenable to elimination or eradication.

According to WHO estimates, around one billion people living in the developing world fall victims to at least one of these diseases. While these diseases generally do not kill, they result in high morbidity rates.

The affected victims are subject to discrimination and human rights abuses. The combined disability adjusted life years (DALYs) lost to these diseases is over 11 million per year, WHO stated.

WHO records show that over 70 per cent of the global leprosy cases, 50 per cent of the persons globally affected by clinical LF, 35 per cent of the global STH infections and 20 per cent of the globally estimated kala azar cases are in the developing countries.

The region also accounts for a high rate of STH infections and three countries have yaws endemic areas - India, Indonesia and Timor Leste. India has the highest disease burden in the case of leprosy, lymphatic filariasis and kala azar.

On November 17-18, a high-level meeting of policy makers, national and international agencies supporting health programmes, NGOs and private sector, experts and senior officials from the WHO will be held in Bangalore to review the status and strategies for these diseases.

The meeting aims at sensitising policy makers, national and international donor community, non-governmental agencies and private sector to the magnitude of these diseases and promotes the need and benefits of elimination/eradication of these diseases from the region.

Professor David Molyneux a renowned expert in tropical diseases of Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK will be the keynote speaker at the meeting.

These 'neglected' tropical diseases are poverty-related and primarily affect the poor and vulnerable groups like women, children and the most marginalised of populations. Though there are cost-effective interventions to tackle the diseases, they have generally been neglected because of inadequate policy support, insufficient resource allocations, non-priority accorded in research and development and ineffective implementation of available interventions in coverage and quality.