Neglected Tropical Diseases

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Trees, for tabling this Question for Short Debate. The story of tackling NTDs is one of extraordinary progress and collaboration. There is plenty to celebrate in this space but, as always, still more to do.

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to visit Rwanda and see a mass drug administration take place in a school. It is not hard to imagine why children whose bodies are infected with parasitic intestinal worms find it difficult to go to school, concentrate in class and get an education. The children I visited are now free to learn and fulfil their potential. Almost 4.5 million people a year in Rwanda receive treatment for NTDs, and for every one of those children I met, there are millions more stories of lives changed. Across the world, this story of lives changed is multiplied. Some 1 billion people received treatment for at least one NTD in 2016. These people are now able to see, walk to work, access education, get jobs and have better lives.

The reach of treatment of all NTDs has grown dramatically, freeing more people from disease every year. There has been a 68% reduction in the number of cases of sleeping sickness, and several countries, such as Bangladesh, have significantly reduced the number of new cases of visceral leishmaniasis—I say this because I have just learned it. In several cases countries have managed to eliminate diseases entirely. I will not go through the entire list because the noble Lord, Lord Trees, has already done so.

This success is testament to people working together across the world in a co-ordinated response. Researchers have been developing effective cures and treatments. Pharmaceutical companies have provided the means to fight the diseases: 1.8 billion treatments were donated by pharmaceutical companies in 2016 alone. Targeted funding has been provided by international development agencies and private foundations to train medical professionals and provide help where it is needed. Domestic Governments in endemic countries have financed and enabled NTD programmes, meaning that in 2016 interventions against NTDs were able to take place in more than 130 countries.

This progress is testament to the extraordinary power of networks, and should give heart to any who doubt that large-scale change is possible. I pay tribute to the work of the END Fund, one of the sister charities of the Legatum Institute, in which I declare an interest. It has shown the power of mobilising private philanthropy and what can be achieved by building coalitions to actively identify gaps and opportunities for investment. In 2006, Alan McCormick saw an article in the Financial Times by a professor of tropical parasitology, Alan Fenwick, which explained that for just 50 cents per person, a life could be freed from disease. Alan and the Legatum group went on to found the END Fund to co-ordinate and generate the capital that would scale up their response. A decade later, in 2017, the fund invested in 23 countries to train 345,000 health workers and treat more than 97 million people. It has been chosen to manage the Reaching the Last Mile Fund, which is a 10-year, $100 million dollar fund founded by His Highness the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi. It is excellent news that DfID has committed a further £1 million to the fund for 2019, in addition to co-investment with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This partnership has enormous potential and, I hope, will lead to greater collaboration beyond 2019.

As we celebrate these extraordinary achievements, it must not be forgotten that these diseases affect the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities and trap them in cycles of poverty. These diseases are not rife in wealthy communities; they thrive where conditions are symptomatic of severe poverty. Margaret Chan, the former director-general of the WHO, said that,

“all of these diseases thrive under conditions of poverty and filth. They tend to cluster together in places where housing is substandard, drinking water is unsafe, sanitation is poor, access to health care is limited or non-existent, and insect vectors are constant household and agricultural companions”.

An effective response is therefore not just one which treats the diseases themselves but has a strategy to invest in raising the prosperity of communities and nations where these diseases are rife. More than 70% of countries and territories that report the presence of neglected tropical diseases are low-income or lower middle-income economies. We must be investing to break the cycle of poverty of which NTDs are a part. Can the Minister expand on what the Government are doing, through our Commonwealth and other relationships, to ensure that this is a priority at the highest level of government in endemic countries? The targets set in 2012 were ambitious; to meet them, more work must be done to reach the remaining 1.5 billion people affected. The role of DfID investment in eliminating neglected tropical diseases is a genuine success story and we have a proud history, as a nation, of contributing to this fight. I therefore call upon the Minister to comment on how we will commit to seeing this fight through right to the end.