The Hill: Securing America’s legacy in the fight against neglected tropical diseases
Mary Ann Peters, CEO of the Carter Center, former U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh

“…[N]ews rarely captures one of the biggest global health successes to date: our country’s efforts to eliminate neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). The NTD Program is a great example of what United States leadership in global health can achieve, and remains one of the best investments we can make in the health and economies of some of the fastest growing markets in the world. … The United States has been at the forefront of these efforts since well before the [2012] London Declaration. With bipartisan support, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s NTD Program has been improving the lives of hundreds of millions of people since 2006. This program distributes 300 million treatments annually, reaching 743 million people with 1.6 billion NTD treatments across 31 countries to date. In addition, the NTD Program has invested in research and development to ensure that promising new breakthrough medicines for filarial diseases can be rapidly evaluated, registered, and made available to patients. … The United States should remain in the vanguard of the fight against NTDs to transform these estimates into reality — and better lives for the more than one billion people still needlessly suffering from these preventable diseases…” (4/21).

Huffington Post: Collaboration Drives Efforts To End Neglected Tropical Diseases
Dave Ross, president and chief executive officer of the Task Force for Global Health; Paul Emerson, director of the International Trachoma Initiative; Rubina Imtiaz, director of Children Without Worms; Eric Ottesen, director of the Neglected Tropical Diseases Support Center; Yao Sodahlon, director of the Mectizan Donation Program

“…[S]ince the London Declaration on NTDs was signed in 2012, global partners have made much progress in reducing the burden of these diseases on people around the world. … We at the Task Force for Global Health are proud to be among those partners and to celebrate the successes of these collaborations, even as we continue to work harder to sustain our gains. … We believe collaboration is critical to solving large-scale health problems, a sentiment that was echoed at the most recent meeting of the Coalition for Operational Research on Neglected Tropical Diseases, for which the NTD Support Center at The Task Force serves as secretariat. There, in a keynote address, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter called on researchers, program implementers, donors and policy-makers to work together more closely on NTD elimination. … Whatever pride we take in our organizations, we take infinitely more pride in the collective accomplishments of the partners who are working to end NTDs. … Most importantly, however, the credit for NTD elimination belongs to the countries and communities in which these diseases continue to pose public health threats…” (4/21).