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 Forecasting a total of $34 billion needed to fight NTDs for the next
16 years, the WHO said governments whose people are blinded,
disfigured and killed by such diseases should recognize the great
potential human and economic return on tackling them.
"Increased investments by national governments can alleviate human
misery, distribute economic gains more evenly and free masses of
people long trapped in poverty," WHO director-general Margaret Chan
said in a report.
The investment would represent as little as 0.1 percent of current
national health spending of the low and middle-income countries
affected by NTDs, the WHO said, and could also encourage
international donors to increase aid.
NTDs such as river blindness, rabies, guinea worm and elephantiasis
cause disfigurement, disability and death among millions of poor
people in developing countries.
Also among the 17 being targeted by the WHO are Human African
trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness -- a parasitic infection
spread by tsetse flies that is almost 100 percent fatal without
prompt diagnosis and treatment -- and dengue, sometimes known as "breakbone
fever" -- a mosquito-borne disease that in its severe form can cause
lethal complications.
Dirk Engels, the WHO's director of NTD control, told Reuters that
while NTDs often affect the poorest people in a country, many of
those nations where they are endemic are middle-income economies
where growth is accelerating.
"Endemic countries can play their part," he said in an interview in
London. "Some endemic countries are fast developing, and as they
move up the ladder they also have more means to pay for tackling
NTDs."
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The WHO report noted some progress, for example against
Dracunculiasis, or guinea-worm disease, of which there were just 126
cases reported in 2014 compared to almost 1,800 in 2010 and 3.5
million in the mid-1980s.
"Eradication of this disease is achievable with continued effort and
investment," it said.
Engels also said the devastating Ebola epidemic in West Africa in
the past year highlighted to developing countries the risk of doing
nothing to tackle diseases often ignored by unaffected wealthy
countries.
"Ebola has shown that when there is real urgency, something can be
done (by foreign donors and pharmaceutical companies)," he said.
"But it's also shown that maybe we shouldn't wait until it is
urgent."
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