The Disease

Abstract

Tel: +41 22 791 2111 Fax: +41 22 791 3111 Visit WHO at www.who.int The presence, or absence, of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) can be seen as a proxy for poverty and for the success of interventions aimed at reducing poverty. Today, coverage of the public-health interventions recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) against NTDs may be interpreted as a proxy for universal health coverage and shared prosperity – in short, a proxy for coverage against neglect. As the world's focus shifts from development to sustainable development, from poverty eradication to shared prosperity, and from disease-specifi c goals to universal health coverage, control of NTDs will assume an important role towards the target of achieving universal health coverage, including individual fi nancial risk protection. Success in overcoming NTDs is a " litmus test " for universal health coverage against NTDs in endemic countries. The fi rst WHO report on NTDs (2010) set the scene by presenting the evidence for how these interventions had produced results. The second report (2013) assessed the progress made in deploying them and detailed the obstacles to their implementation. This third report analyses for the fi rst time the investments needed to achieve the scale up of implementation required to achieve the targets of the WHO Roadmap on NTDs and universal coverage against NTDs.