Neglected Tropical Diseases

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow other noble Lords in today’s debate, and I draw attention to my interests as declared in the register. I am delighted, too, not to be introducing the debate tonight but speaking last from the Back Benches, because so many other speakers have dealt with the basics around NTDs. That includes the devastating effects that they have, not only on individuals in terms of debilitation or disfigurement and people often being excluded from their own society because of the effects of the diseases, but also the later effects on child development, educational attainment and pregnancy outcome, and of the interrelation of NTDs with other diseases such as HIV or malaria. All these things together are not only the results of the poverty in these communities but in themselves engender that poverty again. So NTDs are both the result of and the cause of poverty. We have done a great deal to recognise that and much progress has, as has already been stated, been made through the WHO road map, the London declaration, the announcement of the Ross fund and the inclusion of NTDs in the sustainable development goals. But there is much still to be done.

The funding gap, even for the provisions that we know about, has been pointed out tonight, but it goes wider than that because, as other noble Lords have pointed out, we need to tackle this problem not in individual silos. The public health measures that will defeat these diseases are to do with water and sanitation, public health education and the provision of basic services; without those, we will not get very far, and those are expensive items.

In the minute or so that I have left, I want to concentrate on the issue of vaccines. We know that we need to improve the toolbox that we have already. We know that we need better diagnostics, better medicines and better insecticides, and that is something that may become much more important in terms of Zika. But also, we need vaccines. There is some evidence that although for many diseases mass drug administration is extremely effective, for other diseases it is not so effective. Therefore, we need to not take our eye off the ball of vaccine development. We saw this in relation to Ebola, a different sort of disease that has already been mentioned tonight. Zika, I think, is a neglected tropical disease, but it is so neglected that it is not even included with dengue and chikungunya as one of those insect-borne diseases of the poor. It is not one of the 17 top priorities for the WHO. However, that is changing. It changed tonight by the declaration of an emergency. We need vaccines as well as all the other measures, and we know that product development partnerships are very important in getting round the failure of the market often to provide. So my question to the Minister is: what consideration is given within the Ross fund to extending its remit so that it would also cover vaccine development?