Neglected Tropical Diseases

Chris White Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

It is an honour, Mr Williams, to serve under your chairmanship.

I declare an interest as the chairman of the all-party group on neglected tropical diseases. NTDs are a group of diseases that affect more than 1 billion people around the world. They do not have the high profile of malaria, HIV/AIDS or TB—hence the word “neglected”—but they result in disability and death. Even for those who are less seriously affected, they bring chronic conditions that mean loss of income. Such diseases include worms or helminths, schistosomiasis or bilharzia, trachoma, lymphatic filariasis or elephantiasis, and leprosy.

Almost without exception, NTDs are diseases of the poor. They are also curable. The World Health Organisation’s 2010 report found that approximately 90% of their burden can be treated with medicines administered only once or twice a year, and that can sometimes be achieved for as little as 50 US cents. Treating and eradicating those diseases must be at the heart of any programme to tackle poverty. Yet as the title of the debate makes clear, they have been neglected for many years. Institutes such as the Liverpool and London Schools of Tropical Medicine, Imperial College London and the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine, working with researchers and institutes in developing countries, have made great strides in the understanding and treatment of NTDs.

[Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate, not least because his knowledge of the matter is well recognised. Does he agree that Members of Parliament have a role in highlighting neglected tropical diseases, making the public, the media and policy makers aware of them, and ensuring that we reduce them because they kill millions of people every year?

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for making that extremely important point. I will come to the reasons why it is important—particularly with regard to efficiency in the use of aid money, which is a major public policy question.

In recent years, Governments, principally in the UK and the USA, have begun seriously to fund work on NTDs. In the UK, this began under the previous Government with an allocation of £50 million. Earlier this year, the Department for International Development announced a further £240 million over four years, which will supply more than four treatments every second for people in the developing world. I pay tribute to the Secretary of State and his predecessor for recognising the importance of this work. We are especially fortunate because the Minister—I am delighted that he will respond to this debate—has been a champion in the fight against NTDs, both when he was chairman of the all-party group and subsequently as Minister.

Drug companies have also made a great contribution, working with bodies such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. On the day when the UK announced a fivefold increase in its funding commitment to tackle NTDs as part of a global partnership, all drug companies with NTD drug donation programmes pledged to sustain, extend or increase their programmes to the end of the decade.

For example, GlaxoSmithKline has already donated nearly 2 billion tablets of albendazole for lymphatic filariasis and will continue until elimination is achieved. It is also providing 400 million tablets a year free of charge until 2020 to de-worm school-age children in Africa. Johnson and Johnson is increasing its annual donation of mebendazole to 200 million tablets every year—again, to tackle worms. Novartis is continuing its commitment to providing multi-drug therapy against leprosy in a final push against the disease. Pfizer will continue its donation of drugs for blinding trachoma until at least 2020, as well as donating the drug and a placebo for a study on the reduction in mortality of children treated with that drug. Sanofi, Merck and various other companies are also providing major drug donations.

It is not only drugs that are important, but vaccines. The Sabin Vaccine Institute, in which I declare an interest as a trustee of its UK charitable body, is developing vaccines to treat NTDs around the world.

We have come a long way in tackling such diseases in the past decade. The number of new cases of leprosy reported to the WHO has fallen every year since 2002 from 620,000 to 249,000 in 2008. The number of new cases of human African trypanosomiasis reported to the WHO worldwide fell from 37,000 in 1998 to 10,000 in 2008. However, there is still much to do—and it can be done. Three things are essential. The first is to keep up funding. In the 1960s, malaria was on the retreat, but the world took its eye off the ball and it came back with a vengeance in the 1980s and 1990s. Malaria is now again being tackled, but at a cost of $5 billion to $6 billion a year and after millions of unnecessary deaths.

The lesson is that we need consistency and determination. The UK has rightly decided that eradicating NTDs is one of the best ways to tackle poverty, and we should make that part of our work each year until the work is done. I am not asking for more money. DFID has committed a substantial amount each year for the next four years. However, there should be no uncertainty about future funding. DFID should continue to be a reliable partner over several Parliaments.

At the same time, I should like DFID to encourage other countries to begin or increase support for the work. The USA has been a reliable funder, for which we are grateful. It would be most welcome if it, too, could commit to stable amounts over several years. Then there are donors who have yet to contribute to the work. Will the Minister report on what he is doing to encourage others into the fold?

Secondly, we need to support the countries in which NTDs are endemic, to strengthen their health systems. The most important thing I have learned in the past year as chairman of the all-party group is that it is only through effective grass-roots health systems with committed, trained staff, often backed by community volunteers, that the fight against NTDs is sustainable. One-off treatment campaigns can be effective, and are necessary where systems are weak or do not exist, but the effects will fade unless they are backed up by permanent staff and clinics.

The UK has considerable expertise in working with developing countries to strengthen their health systems, but it is vital that the countries themselves meet their commitments, under the Abuja declaration, to spend 15% of their total budget on health. Few are doing that. I would like the Minister to let hon. Members know what the Government are doing to encourage our partner Governments in those countries to keep to their commitment under the Abuja declaration.

Finally, we need to support research. I have been heartened, as chairman of the all-party group, to see both how closely involved and how generous several pharmaceutical companies have been in tackling NTDs in the way I have outlined. However, we need to work closely with them and the research institutes in the UK and elsewhere to ensure that there is a pipeline of effective drugs for all the relevant diseases. Developing drugs and vaccines and bringing them to market is costly; those who suffer from NTDs cannot afford prices that reflect the cost of the research and development. However, although the market may not justify the cost of R and D, common humanity does, and that is where the British people, through DFID, can make a huge contribution.

We often speak about DFID doing this or the British Government doing that, but it is not they but the British people who are making the work possible, by their commitment to international development. I know that the voices raised against are often loud, but in my constituency of Stafford I have met thousands of people who give up their time and money to support projects around the world—schoolchildren, scouts, guides, community groups, churches and others. When the British people see that it is their support, through donations and taxes, that is helping to improve the lives of millions suffering from NTDs, they should know that they are an essential part of that great endeavour.