Ending the Neglect to Attain the Sustainable Development Goals: A Road Map for Neglected Tropical Diseases 2021–2030 (Executive Summary)

This document is an executive summary of the World Health Organization's report on Ending the Neglect to Attain the Sustainable Development Goals: A Road Map for Neglected Tropical Diseases 2021–2030.

The road map for 2021–2030 sets global targets and milestones to prevent, control, eliminate and eradicate 20 diseases and disease groups. It also sets cross-cutting targets aligned with both WHO’s Thirteenth General Programme of Work, 2019–2023 and the SDGs, with strategies for achieving the targets during the next decade.

The new road map was prepared by extensive global consultation. This process involved regional workshops with managers of national NTD prevention and control programmes, meetings with stakeholders in NTDs and related areas of work, country workshops with stakeholders in NTDs and related areas of work, input from disease experts, disease modellers, donors and partners obtained through more than 100 bilateral interviews and consideration of more than 300 responses from three rounds of online consultations. The document therefore reflects the perspectives of Member States and a wide range of stakeholders.

Since WHO’s first road map for the prevention and control of NTDs (neglected tropical diseases) was published in 2012, substantial progress has been made. Today, 600 million fewer people require interventions against several NTDs than in 2010, and 42 countries, territories and areas have eliminated at least one disease.

Dracunculiasis is on the verge of eradication, with 54 human cases reported in four countries in 2019; lymphatic filariasis and trachoma have been eliminated as public health problems in 17 and 10 countries, respectively; onchocerciasis has been eliminated in four countries in the Region of the Americas; the annual number of cases of human African trypanosomiasis has fallen from more than 7000 in 2012 to fewer than 1000 in 2019, halving the original target of 2000 cases by 2020; and the number of new leprosy cases reported globally has continued to decline since 2010 at an average of 1% per year after most endemic countries achieved elimination as a public health problem, defined as less than one case on treatment per 10 000 population.

Progress against NTDs has alleviated the human and economic burden they impose on the world’s most disadvantaged communities. Over the past nine years, it has demonstrated the effectiveness of aligning the work of Member States with that of diverse partners. Two important facts have emerged, namely the recognition that:

(i) interventions to prevent and control NTD are one of the “best buys” in global public health, yielding an estimated net benefit to affected individuals of about US$ 25 per US$ 1 invested in preventive chemotherapy; and
(ii) NTDs are important tracers for identifying disparities in progress towards both universal health coverage and equitable access to high-quality health services.