“In everything we do [in health], it is necessary to consider the sustainability...to maintain the successe
News
Ensuring Ghana’s Victory in the Fight Against Lymphatic Filariasis
Ensuring adequate care for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in endemic communities is often complicated by the variety of treatments and capacity needed to address a single disease.
“Health is Everyone’s Business”: How Togo is Tackling Sustainable Neglected Tropical Disease Services
Health leaders of the Togo Ministry of Health, Public Hygiene and Universal Access to Care Togo Ministry of Health, along with program officials from the ministries of economy and finance, education, agriculture, and youth and partner organizations gathered in Lomé on November 11th to launch and disseminate the country’s Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) sustainability plan.
Ghana proceeds to the next phase of Neglected Tropical Diseases program sustainability
USAID’s Act to End NTDs | West Program (Act | West) is supporting the Ghanaian NTD Program to strengthen its program operations, analyze its financial needs, and assess its current and desired state along a continuum of six sustainability outcomes (Coordination, Policy & Planning, Operational Capacity, Information Systems, Services, and Financing). Building on this momentum, the NTD Program commenced the creation of a sustainability plan that will guide the Program and its partners on the planning, implementation, and monitoring of steps taken to maintain and continue these achievements.
Sierra Leone Prioritizes Community Ownership in Sustainability Plan Development
In June 2021, the Sierra Leone National NTD Program (NNTDP), with support from USAID’s Act to End NTDs | West (Act | West) program, convened key stakeholders[1] to develop a five-year NTD Sustainability Plan to mainstream NTDs into routine health service delivery, national policies, and financing for sustainable NTD programming.
Mural with a Message: Using Art to Tell the NTD Story in Guinea
Read about the artists who have found an innovative way to combine their work with their passion for improving the health of the people of Guinea.
Can lessons learned from NTDs inform COVID-19 vaccine campaigns?
The USAID-funded program I work on, called Act to End Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) | West, helps 11 countries in West Africa to control and eliminate neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) through a strategy known as mass drug administration (MDA). Although the medicines distributed through MDA are mainly tablets, not injections that require a cold chain, the challenges aren’t all that different from those facing COVID-19 vaccine campaigns: community-wide distribution of medicine—or several medicines, in the case of NTDs—to large numbers of people as the primary intervention.
USAID Publishes Technical Brief to Accompany New WHO Morbidity Management Tool for Lymphatic Filariasis Care
In March 2021, the USAID Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) Division and its Act to End NTDs | West and | East Programs, respectively managed by FHI 360 and RTI International, published a technical brief to complement World Health Organization’s (WHO) publication and share the experiences and key learnings of 12 National NTD Programs on their use of these tools.
A Catalyst for NTD Sustainability in Ghana
By bringing critical stakeholders together to establish a shared understanding of the barriers to NTD progress, agree on the need for collaboration, and coordinate action to continue toward NTD control and elimination, Ghana's sensitization meeting served as a catalyst for ramping up progress toward NTD sustainability in Ghana.