Today's Edition
ISIDORA CIRIC (ABU DHABI)
In many of the world’s poorest villages, the same infections return with each rainy season, spread through dirty water, blackfly or mosquito bites and poor sanitation.
The result can be blindness, swollen limbs, chronic pain and years of lost schooling and income for families whoare least able to absorb the loss.
That is the quiet weight of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) – a group of infections that still affect more than a billion people worldwide. Yet on the World Health Organization’s books, they fall into a rare category: diseases that can realistically be pushed to the point of elimination with medicines costing less than a dollar per person.
World NTD Day, observed annually on January 30, was created to keep that burden on the global agenda, and the UAE has spent the past seven years turning the occasion into a reminder that “neglected” should be treated as a policy problem with deadlines rather than a permanent feature of poverty.
“This day is a reminder that NTDs are diseases of neglect, thriving where poverty is deepest, and health systems are at their weakest. This neglect is preventable and reversible,” H.E. Dr Shamma Al Mazrouei, Acting Director-General of the Mohamed bin Zayed Foundation for Humanity (MBZFH), said in an interview with Aletihad.
The day itself was first championed by the UAE at the 2019 Reaching the Last Mile Forum in Abu Dhabi, and later adopted by the WHO as an official annual observance. The MBZFH now acts as the delivery arm of that approach, backing country-led programmes through the Reaching the Last Mile Fund (RLMF) and related partnerships.
Why a Finishable Problem Still Lingers
NTDs are not a single illness but a group of 21 infections – including river blindness, lymphatic filariasis, trachoma and Guinea worm disease – spread through contaminated water, soil, insects or close contact. Concentrated in areas with weak healthcare infrastructure, each disease is capable of causing lifelong disability.
According to Dr Al Mazrouei, these conditions were labelled “neglected” because they have historically sat at the margins of global health financing, “despite their devastating toll on families and communities”.
Elimination, in practical terms, means driving infection below the level that requires blanket treatment, then switching to targeted surveillance. As of last December, 58 countries had eliminated at least one NTD, a pace of progress that health planners describe as faster than at any time since the London Declaration of 2012.
“NTDs are considered a solvable global health challenge for multiple reasons,” Dr Al Mazrouei said, first pointing to mass drug administration costs of less than $1 per person per year and existing community networks to deliver the doses.
She added that NTDs also have clear pathways for elimination, set by the WHO and backed by decades of evidence, networks of donors and NGOs, and endemic countries’ deep operational expertise.
Yet the bottlenecks persist, and they tend to be operational rather than scientific. Development aid for NTDs fell by about 41% between 2018 and 2023, contributing to an estimated $2.5 billion funding gap, leading to treatment delays and straining health systems.
“This is where long-term commitment by donors and countries matters most, to protect existing elimination gains and ensure more,” Dr Al Mazrouei said.
Proof That the Last Mile Is Reachable
River blindness once forced Sahel communities to abandon fertile riverbanks in fear of losing their sight. Last year, Niger became the first African nation to declare the infection gone, proving that low-cost drugs and unglamorous surveillance can erase a billion-person health burden.
The RLMF – a $600 million vehicle launched by President His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in 2017 and managed by MBZFH – supported Niger through surveillance and data gathering to prove transmission had stopped, part of the UAE’s decades-long legacy of fighting against the overlooked cause.
The country’s first major NTD commitment dates back to 1990, when the UAE’s Founding Father, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan donated $5.77 million to The Carter Center to support Guinea worm eradication.
Today, the Foundation seeks to scale this legacy by working hand-in-hand with local governments to build lasting health capacity that can support communities long after disease elimination.
“Through the Reaching the Last Mile Fund, we approach NTD programmes as systems- strengthening investments, not standalone interventions,” Dr Al Mazrouei said.
“In practice, this means designing programmes that are country-led, embedded in national health strategies, and focused on strengthening core capacities that can be used to improve health outcomes more broadly.”
Looking toward 2030, the MBZFH plans to keep backing RLMF’s vision of “an Africa free of river blindness and lymphatic filariasis”, while also expanding its focus to other diseases where similar models can accelerate progress.
One of those is Trachoma, the leading infectious cause of blindness, which remains a public health problem in 30 countries and has left an estimated 1.9 million people with visual impairment.
According to the Foundation, while treatment is essential, elimination depends on addressing the wider conditions that allow the diseases to persist, including reinfection and broader health and infrastructure factors.
The economic logic for intervention is as compelling as the humanitarian case. On one hand, the absence of NTD treatment traps communities in cycles of poverty by weakening national productivity and driving an estimated $33 billion a year in lost wages and out-of-pocket health expenses. The economic benefits of global NTD elimination, meanwhile, are estimated at $342 billion and “even greater human benefits”.
“Healthy children are able to attend school. Healthy adults can work… Eliminating these diseases is therefore not only a health priority but a critical step towards reducing poverty and advancing development goals,” Dr Al Mazrouei said.
“And, World NTD Day is a reminder that together we can achieve a world free of NTDs, and improve the lives and livelihoods of millions.”
