Home / News / WHO Adopts Scabies as a Neglected Tropical Disease, Ask The Carter Center...
Sign up to receive our news roundups

WHO Adopts Scabies as a Neglected Tropical Disease, Ask The Carter Center Anything & Other NTD News

News roundup

This news roundup is a collection of headlines and other items on neglected tropical diseases, and does not reflect the work or the views of the Neglected Tropical Diseases Support Center. 

 Frank Richards

The Carter Center's Frank Richards examines a man in Amakohia village, Imo state, Nigeria, for river blindness. The Center’s 100&Change proposal aims to eliminate this disease in Nigeria.

R. MCDOWALL/THE CARTER CENTER

Lymphatic filariasis
Onchocerciasis
Schistosomiasis
Soil-Transmitted Helminthiasis
Trachoma
Cross-cutting
Other
Zika

Lymphatic filariasis

13 new patients with filariasis found in Khadki

Umesh Isalkar
The Times of India
At a time when the country is consolidating efforts to eliminate lymphatic filariasis by 2017, as many as 13 new patients have been found infected with microfilariae, the minute larva of a filaria, in the Khadki area of Pune during surveillance activity a few days ago. The detection of these patients has put the state health machinery on its toes, prompting officials to carry out mass surveillance. They collected blood smears of local residents and also initiated anti-larval activity to destroy breeding of Culex mosquitoes, which are primary vectors of the infectious disease in the urban and semi-urban areas.

Onchocerciasis

100&Change: Ask Me Anything!

The Carter Center
The Carter Center is honored to be a semifinalist in the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change competition. The winner of this competition will receive a $100 million grant "to enable real progress toward a meaningful and lasting solution to a critical problem of our time." On Tuesday, June 13, 11 a.m. EDT, the Center will jointly host an online "Ask Me Anything" Reddit chat with the MacArthur Foundation as part of an effort to engage the public and receive input on the proposals.

Community Volunteers Key to River Blindness Strategy

Emmanuel Miri
MacArthur Foundation
Gabriel Ani is a farmer and schoolteacher in the Ndiulo Enugu-Nato village in Enugu State, Nigeria, who loves his community and is loved back. Gabriel is a community volunteer drug distributor—the hands, feet, and heart of our River Blindness Elimination Program. For nine years, he has served more than 1,000 people in 129 households, carefully measuring each person to determine the proper dosage of medicine and recording it in a ledger.

AbbVie receives Orphan designation for onchocerciasis candidate

The Fly
The FDA has granted Orphan designation for AbbVie onchocerciasis product 4"-(p-fluorobenzyl)tylosin A. The designation was granted June 8, according to an online notice from the agency.

Schistosomiasis

New process may lead to vaccine for schistosomiasis

Blaine Friedlander
Cornell Chronicle
Cornell and Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research scientists have developed a way to produce a protein antigen that may be useful as vaccine for schistosomiasis – a parasitic disease that infects millions of people, mostly in tropical and subtropical climates – according to new research in the journal Protein Expression and Purification, June 2017. If clinical trials succeed, this vaccine may lead to a substantial decrease in the global number of schistosomiasis cases, which rank second only to malaria. The vaccine may have the added benefit of potentially reducing the incidence of bladder cancer.

Optimising cluster survey design for planning schistosomiasis preventive chemotherapy

Sarah C. L. Knowles et al.
PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases
We show that although small surveys of around 5 schools per district are frequently adopted for mapping schistosomiasis, such small surveys are prone to miss endemic schistosomiasis fairly often, and are also not cost efficient. Our results suggest that among the designs tested, surveys involving 15–20 schools per district optimise cost-efficiency, providing the most accurate treatment decisions per dollar spent. These findings have important implications for the schistosomiasis control community, and provide the first evidence-based suggestion of a simple survey design for mapping schistosomiasis in endemic countries.

Soil-Transmitted Helminthiasis

Prevalence of intestinal parasitic infection and associated risk factors among village health volunteers in rural communities...

Chuchard Punsawad et al.
BMC Public Health
This study is the first to describe the prevalence of intestinal parasitic infection VHVs from southern Thailand. Hookworm infection is more prevalent than other types of STH infection. The development of community awareness campaigns and appropriate control measures should be considered to reduce the prevalence of hookworm infection, especially among VHVs who are the key persons providing health education to the community.

Prevalence and intensity of soil transmitted helminths among school children of Mendera Elementary School, Jimma...

Ephrem Tefera et al.
The Pan African Medical Journal
Nearly half of the school children were infected with at least one STHs and majority of the students had light infection of soil transmitted helminths. Students who did not wash their hands after defecation were three times more likely to be positive for Ascaris infection than those who washed their hands after defecation. Therefore, measures like health information dissemination on the advantage of washing hands after defecation and on proper use of latrine should be taken into account to alleviate the problem.

Trachoma

Celebrating success on the road to national Trachoma elimination in Uganda

The Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust
Uganda is a trachoma-endemic country in east Africa where an estimated 10 million people are at risk of developing the disease. The Trust’s Trachoma Initiative was launched in Uganda in November 2014 and to date has treated 25,650 people with surgery for trachoma trichiasis, the final, most painful and ultimately blinding stage of the disease. The programme will now be expanded in 14 districts across Uganda where work will be undertaken to:

[VIDEO] Ministry of Health Boost Fight Against Trachoma

NBS TV Uganda
YouTube
Trachoma among several other Neglected Tropical Diseases has continued to cause permanent visual impairments among the people that are infected. Dokolo district alone has over the time had increasing numbers of cases now standing at 500 people whose chances of having their sight fully restored only rests for surgeries. To give a ray of hope to these people, a trachoma surgery campaign has been launched in this district by the Ministry of health together with its development partners.

Working Together Towards Trachoma Elimination in Tanzania

Elisa Baring
Engaging Noteworthy Dialogue
Over the past two days, partners working in support of trachoma elimination efforts in Tanzania came together for an annual review and planning meeting...Tanzania implemented the trachoma SAFE (surgery, antibiotics, facial cleanliness, and environmental improvement) strategy in 1999 and in 2014/2015, with the support of the above mentioned donors, an expanded effort to prioritize surgical interventions, face washing efforts, and environmental change was put in place.

Relieving the Pain of Trachoma

Awa Dieng
Helen Keller International
Millions of people like Halimata live with trichiasis, the long-term consequence of repeated trachoma infections. The condition is painful, as scarring causes the eyelid to turn inward allowing the eyelashes to scrape the cornea. Without surgery to correct the position of their eyelid, sufferers like Halimata blink themselves blind.

Cross-cutting

Report of the Tenth Meeting of the WHO Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for Neglected Tropical Diseases

World Health Organization
After a summary of the proceedings of day 1, Professor de Silva turned to the first item of the agenda of day 2: consideration of four additional diseases to the NTD portfolio...Recommendation: Chromoblastomycosis should be added to the NTD portfolio in category B together with mycetoma and other deep mycoses...Recommendation: Podoconiosis should not be included in the NTD portfolio (category C)...Recommendation: Scabies should be included in the NTD profile in category A, together with other ectoparasites...Recommendation: STAG recommends that WHO addresses the issue of snakebite evenoming, but it is unsure that the programmatic aspects of this would be best handled by the NTD Department.

The long road to eliminating NTDs

Hellen Nachilongo
The Citizen
In Tanzania, river blindness, trachoma and lymphatic filariasis, which are highly prevalent, should be the focus by health stakeholders on uplifting the poor from the disease menace.

In bid to fight superbugs, WHO tries to keep certain antibiotics largely off the table

Helen Branswell
STAT
In a bid to battle antibiotic resistance, the World Health Organization for the first time has classified antibiotics into three categories, including one that lists the drugs it hopes will not be used except in circumstances of dire need.

Call for Applications: Centennial Travel Fellowship

American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene
In an effort to stimulate interest in tropical infectious diseases and build international collaborations, ASTMH seeks applications from physicians and scientists for this international career opportunity focused on benefiting underserved populations in locations in the world where the burden of disease is high.

Other

Accelerating yaws eradication: antibiotic added to WHO’s essential medicines list

World Health Organization
The World Health Organization (WHO) has added azithromycin to its 2017 Model List of Essential Medicines. Azithromycin is a common antibiotic used to treat bacterial infections, including yaws. “The inclusion of azithromycin in WHO’s list for the treatment of yaws will greatly facilitate access to the medicine and enhance the implementation of eradication programmes,” said Dr Kingsley Asiedu, Medical Officer in charge of yaws eradication in the WHO Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Dracunculiasis: aggressive vector control to accelerate interruption of transmission

World Health Organization
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the “last mile” of eradicating dracunculiasis (guinea-worm disease) can be achieved if countries where the disease is endemic maintain robust surveillance and implement prompt control measures, awareness levels and case containment strategies. In Chad in particular, implementing more aggressive vector control alongside other eradication strategies will be key to interrupting transmission through the treatment of all water bodies with the cyclopicide temephos in order to kill water fleas (cyclops) that carry the infective guinea-worm larvae.

The Epidemiology of Dengue in the Americas Over the Last Three Decades: A Worrisome Reality

José Luis San Martín et al.
The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
Although there is a perceived increase in disease burden, dengue epidemiology of the Americas region has not been well documented. Here, we characterize dengue disease dynamics during the last three decades and track the spread of dengue across the Americas.

Leishmaniases: Epidemiological Report of the Americas - 2017

Pan American Health Organization
In the Americas, leishmaniases remain a public health problem due to their magnitude and clinical, biological and epidemiological complexity, mainly affecting the poorest, especially in developing countries, requiring a collective effort and shared commitment between governments, organizations, institutions and society for their control. In 2016, the Member States of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), under the Resolution CD55. R09 of the Directing Council approved the regional plan of action for the elimination of neglected infectious diseases and post-elimination actions 2016-2022.

Male farmers at highest risk of contracting 'monkey malaria' in Malaysia

James Barr
EurekAlert!
Adult male farmers in Malaysia are more than twice as likely to contract Plasmodium knowlesi malaria - an infection usually found only in monkeys - than other people in their communities, according to a new study published in The Lancet Planetary Health...The study is the first comprehensive assessment of factors associated with contracting symptomatic P. knowlesi infection which is threatening efforts to eliminate malaria in South East Asia.

Zika

‘Part of the new reality’: Despite confusion, Zika warnings are here to stay

Helen Branswell
STAT
Zika has faded from the headlines like a mosquito’s dying buzz...But the risk the insidious pathogen poses to a pregnancy hasn’t gone away, and public health authorities are grappling with how to get the message out to pregnant women. Despite public confusion over whether Zika remains a public health threat, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to warn women who are pregnant to avoid traveling to wide swathes of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Injustices of Zika

Pia Riggirozzi
Project Syndicate
Clearly, the Zika crisis is not gender-neutral. In addressing its medium- to long-term consequences, a focus on women – especially poor women – is needed. That does not mean more media coverage of the deformities associated with microcephaly or even of the difficulties faced by their mothers. And it certainly does not mean more efforts to police women’s behavior.

5% of U.S. Pregnant Women with Zika Had Baby With a Birth Defect

Catherine Saint Louis
The New York Times
Five percent of pregnant women with a confirmed Zika infection in the United States territories, including Puerto Rico, went on to have a baby with a related birth defect, according to the most comprehensive report to date from federal officials. The report, published on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also provided for the first time preliminary estimates of this risk by trimester. Previously, there were not enough births following exposure to the Zika virus to make such estimates

Study links pesticide used to fight Zika in Florida to health impacts in Chinese babies

Jenny Staletovich
Miami Herald
The pesticide widely used to fight Zika-carrying mosquitoes in Florida and across the nation has been linked to deficits in motor functions in Chinese babies, according to a new study. The study, whose authors say it is the first to examine real-world exposure to naled outside workplace accidents or lab experiments, used cord blood from 237 mothers who gave birth to healthy babies at a hospital in southeast China between 2008 and 2011. At six weeks, the babies displayed no problems. But at nine months, the babies suffered from slight problems with coordination, movement and other motor functions.

Upcoming Events

Health Systems Summer Institute
June 12-23, Baltimore, Maryland
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
The new Health Systems Summer Institute provides early- and mid-career public health professionals the skills necessary to address key health systems issues of today. The Institute is also a great opportunity for part-time MPH and other Hopkins students and fellows to learn a valuable set of skills in an in-demand, and rapidly growing field of public health.

European Educational Programme in Epidemiology (EEPE)
June 13-July 7, Florence, Italy
International Epidemiological Association
The course is intended for epidemiologists, statisticians, clinicians and public health practitioners with an interest in epidemiology. The course is taught in English and held in residential form in the “Studium” centre, Florence.

Update Course in Clinical Tropical Medicine and Travelers' Health
June 14-15, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
ASTMH has developed this course as an update in the essential components of tropical medicine and travelers' health. This two-day meeting is designed for physicians and for all other health care providers working in tropical medicine or travelers' health. Speakers are internationally recognized authorities in the field. 

The 7th International Lymphoedema Framework Conference
June 21-24, Siracusa, Sicily, Italy
The ILF 2017 Conference will gather practioners, researchers, affiliates and stakeholders from all over the world. It is thus a great opportunity to present your knowledge to a multi-stakeholder audience.

Global Health Focus: Repurposing for Rare Diseases and Orphan Drug Development
June 27-28, 2017
The 6th Annual Drug Repositioning, Repurposing and Rescue Conference
Featured Presentation: Lead Repurposing as an Effective Approach for Neglected Tropical Disease Drug Discovery

European Congress of Epidemiology
July 4-6, Lyon, France
International Epidemiological Association
The European Congress of Epidemiology 2018, titled Crises, Epidemiological transitions and the role of epidemiologists, will take place on July 4-6 2018 in Lyon, France.

Annual General Scientific Meeting
July 17-21, Asaba, Nigeria
West African College of Physicians
THEME:Universal Access to Health; A Basic Necessity for Attainment of the SDGs; SUB-THEME: Building Sustainable Health Care Leadership for SDG Goal 3; CONFERENCE WORKSHOP TOPIC: Quality of Health Care

Advanced Residential Course on Poverty-Related and Neglected Tropical Diseases
July 17-August 4, Pemba Island, Zanzibar
Ivo de Carneri
The Course is addressed to professionals active or interested in public health, with diverse cultural and scientific background and competence. The Course is a practical opportunity to acquire a solid knowledge and a critical understanding on PR&NTD, thanks to the expertise of a high quality teaching team made of African and European lecturers with firsthand experience in the domain.

IEA 2017 World Congress of Epidemiology
August 19-22, Saitama, Japan
International Epidemiological Association
Following the 20th WCE in Anchorage in 2014, we believe to provide opportunities to exchange information about the development of epidemiology in all the fields and to strengthen the relationship among epidemiologists in the world. The main theme is “Global/Regional/Local Health and Epidemiology in a Changing World”, which is appropriate one for discussing the 3-year development of epidemiology from 2014 through 2017.

Neglected Diseases in South East Asia: Building Capacity in Epidemiological Modelling
August 28-September 1, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
University of Malaya
Southeast Asia countries face common threats from infections, including neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and neglected zoonotic diseases (NZDs) that particularly affect marginalized communities―the most vulnerable to exposure and least able to seek treatment. Understanding the transmission and control of infectious diseases can be aided by mathematical modelling, helping to predict disease outbreaks, quantify intervention impact, estimate economic and health-care burdens, and inform cost-effective public health strategies. This workshop will introduce participants to topics from bacterial & viral to helminth NTDs and NZDs through series of lectures and practicals followed by group discussions and Q&A sessions, addressing: a) basic models for vector-borne diseases; b) infection intensity frameworks for helminth infections, and c) models for zoonotic infections.

World Vaccine Congress India
September 19-20, Mumbai, India
Join us at the World Vaccine Congress India this September 19-20 in Mumbai, the latest addition to our global vaccines series, encompassing the World Vaccine Congress Washington and the World Vaccine Congress Europe. With an 18-year heritage, World Vaccine Congress events are annual gatherings of vaccine biopharma companies, from very senior executives to researchers, scientists and engineers, to discuss strategies to overcome vaccine development challenges. 

International Workshop on Disease Mapping in Low-resource Settings
September 14-15, Lancashire, England
Lancaster University
Hosted by Lancaster University on 14 - 15 September 2017, the multidisciplinary workshop will bring together international statistics and epidemiology experts to discuss the mapping of a wide range of diseases including neglected tropical diseases and malaria. 

The multidisciplinarity of parasitology: host-parasite evolution and control in an ever changing world
September 28, London, UK
British Society of Parasitology
The meeting’s aim will be to explore and broadly discuss recent progress towards understanding host-parasite relationships, with a particular emphasis on vectors and intermediate hosts of human diseases.  The meeting will also be a convenient opportunity to develop a festschrift in Parasitology in honour of Prof David Rollinson (a former President of the BSP), marking over forty years of parasitological research.

NNN Conference 2017
September 28-30, Dakar, Senegal
Neglected Tropical Disease NGO Network
NNN hosts its 2017 annual conference in Dakar, Senegal. More information to follow.

Women Leaders in Global Health
October 12, Stanford, CA
Women in Global Health
Women in Global Health is pleased to partner with Stanford University's Center for Innovation in Global Health to present the Women Leaders in Global Health Conference this October 12th, 2017. Registration is now open for this inaugural event. The conference builds on the global movement to press for gender equity in global health leadership by celebrating great works of emerging and established women in the field and cultivating the next generation of women leaders.

ASTMH 66th Annual Meeting
November 5-9, Baltimore, Maryland
American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
The ASTMH Annual Meeting draws tropical medicine and global health professionals representing academia, government, non-profits, philanthropy, NGOs, industry, military and private practice. The meeting is designed for researchers, professors, government and public health officials, military personnel, travel clinic physicians, practicing physicians in tropical medicine, students and all health care providers working in the fields of tropical medicine, hygiene and global health. 

Swedish-Ethiopian Course in Tropical Infections
November 13, 2017 - February 11, 2018, Stockholm, Sweden
Karolinska University Hospital
This is a course in clinical tropical medicine and HIV for clinicians. The overall aim is to provide general knowledge about infectious diseases which require or thrive in a warm climate and / or are important causes of morbidity and mortality in low-income countries. The focus is on diagnosis and treatment both in situations with scarce resources and in more affluent countries. The field visit to Ethiopia gives the participants a unique experience of the health system and infectious disease panorama in a developing country.

World Vaccine & Immunotherapy Congress West Coast
November 30 - December 1, San Diego, CA
Following on from the highly successful World Vaccine Congress series in Washington DC and Europe for the past 18 years, the San Diego event will offer learning and business development opportunities taking advantage of the rich biotech and funding environment that the west coast offers.

Eradicate Malaria World Congress 2018
February 18, 2018, Melbourne, Australia
The inaugural World Congress on Malaria - Eradicate Malaria 2018 - will bring together the broad global community including implementers, scientists, funders, governments, policy makers and those directly affected by the disease. The aim is to bring the broad spectrum of the malaria world together for the first time, to further galvanise the effort for the eradication of malaria.

Multilateral Initiative on Malaria 
April 15-18, 2018, Dakar, Senegal
The Multilateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM) was established in 1997 with a mission to strengthen and sustain through collaborative research and training, the capacity of malaria-endemic countries in Africa to carry out research that is required to develop and improve tools for malaria control and to strengthen the research-control interphase.