Activities of the DNTDs

Geneva/Berlin, 14 June 2023. Only three months after his appointment, Dr Ibrahima Socé Fall invited representatives from the global NTD community, countries and donors, implementing and technical partners, academia, patient associations and all other agencies and institutions involved in the fight against NTDs to WHO headquarters. The focus of the two-day conference (12-13 June 2023) was to discuss the way forward in the fight against NTDs based on the WHO-NTD Roadmap 2030. His conclusion: in the future, the WHO Roadmap needs to be adapted to some new challenges, from capturing access to NTD treatments to determining impact; from vertical governance of programmes to horizontal implementation and finally, partner-driven programming needs to be increasingly translated into implementation by national governments. The German Network against Neglected Tropical Diseases also participated in the event and was able to exchange views on future trends.

Berlin, 10.05.2023 Tropical diseases transmitted by insects may become a risk for people in Germany and Europe in the future, even with moderate temperature increases due to climate change. This is the conclusion of a study by the Medical Biodiversity and Parasitology Research Group at Goethe University/ Frankfurt am Main, commissioned by the German Network against Neglected Tropical Diseases. Prof. Dr. Sven Klimpel and Dr. Sarah Cunze presented their modelling at a Parliamentary Evening. After a welcome by Prof. Dr. Achim Hörauf, Speaker of the DNTDs, Director of the Institute for Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Parasitology at the University Hospital Bonn, Dr. Georg Kippels MP and Speaker of the Parliamentary Advisory Board of the DNTDs opened the event by emphasising that the NTDs have now been accompanied by the Parliamentary Advisory Board for almost 10 years and mentioned in this context especially the declarations of the G7 states on NTDs. In the following discussion, Prof. Dr. Jonas Chanasit, Lead Arbovirology and Entomology, Bernhard Nocht Institute Hamburg, pointed out how important it will be in the future to cooperate in European networks and to communicate well with good quality data and thus to focus on prevention. The researchers recommend monitoring in the future that includes vector occurrence, prevalence of pathogens, occurrence of human and veterinary cases of disease and is carried out according to standardised methods throughout Europe. Efforts should be made to establish a European reporting system that could improve the data situation. In the case of species that have not yet become indigenous, vector control at early stages of immigration could be considered. Educating the population is also an important goal. The experts of the German Network consider training programmes for diagnostics, prophylaxis (including vaccinations) and therapy of infectious diseases as well as the development of new diagnostics and therapeutics to be particularly important.