NTDs: The London Declaration, one year on This time last year, a
group of politicians, charities and pharmaceutical companies
came to London to sign a pledge. They committed to either bring
under control or eliminate ten diseases by 2020; ten diseases
that currently cause enormous suffering and hardship across the
developing world. The diseases in question are among the
collection of infections gathered under the umbrella term of
‘neglected tropical diseases’ (NTDs), so it would seem
imperative not to neglect the progress that has been made in
tackling them in the past 12 months. The group of organisations
that came together last January, and the World Health
Organization (WHO), whose roadmap of disease elimination targets
they are committed to achieving, have each reported on their
progress this month. Uniting to combat NTDs celebrate the
provision of 1.12 billion treatments from the pharmaceutical
industry to countries with endemic NTDs in 2012 – they report
that every request for drugs needed to conduct ma