The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Regional Office for Africa (AFRO) has today launched a major new partnership to help African countries reduce the burden of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).

With the greatest burden of these diseases coming from the African continent, the new programme, called the Expanded Special Project for Elimination of NTDs (ESPEN) is expected to provide national NTD programmes with technical and fundraising support in controlling and eliminating five NTDs. These are; onchocerciasis, lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis, soil-transmitted helminths and trachoma.

The announcement was made during the side-lines of the 69th Annual World Health Assembly in Geneva that concluded on May 28.

Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s regional director for Africa, said the launch of ESPEN would scale up the work of national programs against these terrible diseases.

"We know what needs to be done to beat NTDs; ESPEN will make sure national NTD programmes have the data, expertise and financial resources they need to accelerate the fight,” said Dr Moeti.

Prof Isaac Folorunsho Adewole, the federal minister of health of Nigeria, said that applying the right tools would be essential in beating NTDS on the African continent.

"We need the right tools and data to help us get treatments to the people who need them. This special project will help governments across Africa provide a healthier future for our people,” he said.

ESPEN will run from 2016 to 2020, in efforts to continue momentum towards elimination targets established by WHO and as endorsed in the London Declaration on NTDs in January 2012.

This development will beef up strategies of two dozen African countries that vowed to strengthen their fight against NTDs under the Addis Ababa Commitment on NTDs in 2014.

Forty per cent of the global burden of NTDs is in Africa and mostly among communities that are poor. Such diseases destroy lives, prevent children from going to school, and keep communities in cycles of poverty. Eradicating NTDS, a costly investment

Fortunately, a study by Erasmus University projects that reaching WHO’s 2020 goals for these diseases would generate an estimated $565 billion in productivity gains by 2030.

Many of the tools necessary to control and eliminate NTDs already exist, and the drugs necessary to treat and prevent these diseases are donated by pharmaceutical companies – in 2015 alone, 1.5 billion NTD treatments were donated, largely to African countries.

Ken Gustavsen, Executive Director, Corporate Responsibility at MSD the new program is an opportunity to wipe out these diseases across the African continent.

"Significant progress has been made over the past three decades in reaching communities affected by NTDs, and now we’re on the cusp of controlling and potentially eliminating many of these diseases. ESPEN will help us get to that finish line across the African continent,” said Gustaven.

The project will be hosted and managed by WHO AFRO in partnership with African governments, donors, non-governmental organizations, and pharmaceutical companies ensuring a coordinated response to fight these diseases.

These include the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is announcing with a US$4m commitment to support ESPEN, the Kuwait Fund, the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the END Fund, the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa, MSD, Sightsavers, and other organizations, which are together providing a cumulative US$11.4 million in seed funding.

However in order to sustain these investments and recent progress, greater financial and political commitment from African governments is necessary to ensure that these five diseases are controlled and eventually eliminated.

Dr Ariel Pablos-Méndez, the assistant administrator for Global Health, Child and Maternal Survival Coordinator at USAID, lauded these partnerships for the combined efforts to vulnerable people.

"The fight against these disabling diseases is a global health best-buy. ESPEN will help countries accelerate progress against these debilitating diseases and, potentially, unlock increasing domestic resources to reach vulnerable populations. This partnership and other NTD efforts will help end diseases of extreme poverty in this generation,” said Méndez.

ESPEN has been established following the closure of the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC), which during its 20-year mandate made a major contribution to the reduction in on chocerciasis (river blindness) in Africa. The special project will maintain the gains made over the past two decades by integrating this approach across the five diseases.