Neglected Tropical Diseases

Lord Sheikh Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sheikh (Con)]

My Lords, I take a great interest in this subject, as I was born and brought up in east Africa. It has now been four years since the launch of the historic London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases. We cannot underestimate the importance of eliminating these diseases. They affect over 1 billion people across the world. Many of them are among the very poorest and in the hardest-to-reach areas, and they lack adequate sanitation. These are neglected diseases affecting neglected people. The personal suffering affects families and communities, resulting in greater economic hardship for all. In short, these diseases cost developing economies billions of dollars every year. Eliminating them will help to eliminate poverty. More widely, it will also greatly assist in achieving many of the new sustainable development goals. It is therefore crucial that work on eliminating NTDs forms part of wider initiatives on tackling poverty. I commend our Government’s continued commitment on that front.

I am very proud that we have enshrined into law our commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on overseas aid every year. We are the first G7 country to meet this target and can now set an example to other countries around the world. I was very pleased last week to see the Chancellor pledge £3 billion of our international development budget towards combating malaria. I will shortly be leading a delegation of parliamentarians to Sudan, where tackling malaria will be very high on our agenda.

I am pleased that, on the whole, progress on neglected tropical diseases continues to be very positive. The most recent report states that a growing number of endemic countries are achieving their elimination goals and that more people are being reached through these programmes. This is due mainly to the increasing number of domestic programmes and greater political and funding commitments at a national level. For example, Bangladesh now funds 85% of its own NTD programmes. The Philippines provides 94% of its own funding. Honduras has been highly commended for becoming the first Latin American country fully to finance its own NTD programme.

I want to mention specifically the creation of the Addis Ababa commitment in December 2014, when 25 African countries pledged to increase their contributions to tackling NTDs. This is extremely significant, not least because many of these diseases are most prevalent on the African continent. I visited Addis Ababa in October last year as part of a wider visit to Ethiopia, and I learned about the good work that is going on with its vaccination programmes and its attempts to tackle these diseases. I am pleased that these diseases are now high on the global agenda. Despite all this welcome news, it is crucial that the international community continues to drive forward and keep up momentum.