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Quantitative analysis of strategies to achieve the 2020 goals for neglected tropical diseases: where are we now?

This thematic collection of papers aims to provide quantitative analyses to support policy development in the run up to the 2020 goals for neglected tropical diseases laid out by the World Health Organisation and supported in the London Declaration. This collection focuses on the nine diseases in the London Declaration targeted for control or elimination as a public health problem, reducing the burden of disease. The implications of these analyses are summarised in the overarching article, which serves as an introduction to the collection for both non-modellers and modellers who are new to neglected tropical diseases.

For the preventive chemotherapy diseases (PCT) or mass drug administration (MDA) diseases (lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, soil-transmitted helminths, schistosomiasis and trachoma), the issues faced by the programmes are how frequently treatments should be given, to whom should they be given, for how many rounds, as well as methods for estimating the impact of the current programmes. In this collection there are analyses which estimate the impact of current strategies, and the feasibility of achieving the 2020 targets under current and altered strategies.

For the intensified disease management diseases (leprosy, human African trypanosomiasis, visceral leishmaniasis and Chagas disease), there are more fundamental questions around the natural history of disease and the transmission dynamics to be addressed. In this collection there are papers providing new estimates for key parameters, such as incubation periods and true underlying incidence, as well as papers studying the consequences of different model structures to investigate hypotheses about the transmission dynamics.

This collection is the result of a recent and growing international collaboration of researchers within the NTD Modelling Consortium. The authors and guest editor gratefully acknowledge funding of the NTD Modelling Consortium by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in partnership with the Task Force for Global Health, by Novartis Foundation and by Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (UK) ("CIFF"). The views, opinions, assumptions or any other information set out in this collection are solely those of the authors.

Collection published: 22 October 2015

View all collections published in Parasites & Vectors

  1. India has made great progress towards the elimination of lymphatic filariasis. By 2015, most endemic districts had completed at least five annual rounds of mass drug administration (MDA). The next challenge is...

    Authors: Purushothaman Jambulingam, Swaminathan Subramanian, S. J. de Vlas, Chellasamy Vinubala and W. A. Stolk
    Citation: Parasites & Vectors 2016 9:501
  2. Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is a neglected tropical disease transmitted by sandflies. On the Indian subcontinent (ISC), VL is targeted for elimination as a public health problem by 2017. In the context of VL, ...

    Authors: Epke A. Le Rutte, Luc E. Coffeng, Daniel M. Bontje, Epco C. Hasker, José A. Ruiz Postigo, Daniel Argaw, Marleen C. Boelaert and Sake J. De Vlas
    Citation: Parasites & Vectors 2016 9:24
  3. Quantitative analysis and mathematical models are useful tools in informing strategies to control or eliminate disease. Currently, there is an urgent need to develop these tools to inform policy to achieve the...

    Authors: T. Déirdre Hollingsworth, Emily R. Adams, Roy M. Anderson, Katherine Atkins, Sarah Bartsch, María-Gloria Basáñez, Matthew Behrend, David J. Blok, Lloyd A. C. Chapman, Luc Coffeng, Orin Courtenay, Ron E. Crump, Sake J. de Vlas, Andy Dobson, Louise Dyson, Hajnal Farkas…
    Citation: Parasites & Vectors 2015 8:630
  4. Schistosomiasis is endemic in 54 countries, but has one of the lowest coverages by mass drug administration of all helminth diseases. However, with increasing drug availability through donation, the World Heal...

    Authors: RM Anderson, HC Turner, SH Farrell, Jie Yang and JE Truscott
    Citation: Parasites & Vectors 2015 8:553
  5. The World Health Organization (WHO) has set ambitious targets for the elimination of onchocerciasis by 2020–2025 through mass ivermectin treatment. Two different mathematical models have assessed the feasibili...

    Authors: Wilma A. Stolk, Martin Walker, Luc E. Coffeng, María-Gloria Basáñez and Sake J. de Vlas
    Citation: Parasites & Vectors 2015 8:552
  6. It is the aim of the World Health Organisation to eliminate soil-transmitted helminths (STH) as a health problem in children. To this end, the goal is to increase anthelmintic treatment coverage for soil trans...

    Authors: JE Truscott, HC Turner and RM Anderson
    Citation: Parasites & Vectors 2015 8:551
  7. Human African Trypanosomiasis threatens human health across Africa. The subspecies T.b. gambiense is responsible for the vast majority of reported HAT cases. Over the past decade, expanded control efforts accompl...

    Authors: Abhishek Pandey, Katherine E. Atkins, Bruno Bucheton, Mamadou Camara, Serap Aksoy, Alison P. Galvani and Martial L. Ndeffo-Mbah
    Citation: Parasites & Vectors 2015 8:550
  8. Every year more than 200,000 new leprosy cases are registered globally. This number has been fairly stable over the past 8 years. WHO has set a target to interrupt the transmission of leprosy globally by 2020....

    Authors: David J. Blok, Sake J. De Vlas and Jan Hendrik Richardus
    Citation: Parasites & Vectors 2015 8:548
  9. With ambitious targets to eliminate lymphatic filariasis over the coming years, there is a need to identify optimal strategies to achieve them in areas with different baseline prevalence and stages of control....

    Authors: M. A. Irvine, L. J. Reimer, S. M. Njenga, S. Gunawardena, L. Kelly-Hope, M. Bockarie and T. D. Hollingsworth
    Citation: Parasites & Vectors 2015 8:547
  10. Leprosy is caused by infection with Mycobacterium leprae and is characterized by peripheral nerve damage and skin lesions. The disease is classified into paucibacillary (PB) and multibacillary (MB) leprosy. The 2...

    Authors: Cara E. Brook, Roxanne Beauclair, Olina Ngwenya, Lee Worden, Martial Ndeffo-Mbah, Thomas M. Lietman, Sudhir K. Satpathy, Alison P. Galvani and Travis C. Porco
    Citation: Parasites & Vectors 2015 8:542
  11. Globally, hookworms infect 440 million people in developing countries. Especially children and women of childbearing age are at risk of developing anaemia as a result of infection. To control hookworm infectio...

    Authors: Luc E. Coffeng, Roel Bakker, Antonio Montresor and Sake J. de Vlas
    Citation: Parasites & Vectors 2015 8:541
  12. Chagas disease (caused by Trypanosoma cruzi) is the most important neglected tropical disease (NTD) in Latin America, infecting an estimated 5.7 million people in the 21 countries where it is endemic. It is one o...

    Authors: Jennifer K. Peterson, Sarah M. Bartsch, Bruce Y. Lee and Andrew P. Dobson
    Citation: Parasites & Vectors 2015 8:537
  13. The World Health Organization aims to control blinding trachoma by 2020. Decisions on whether to start and stop mass treatments and when to declare that control has been achieved are currently based on clinica...

    Authors: Fengchen Liu, Travis C. Porco, Abdou Amza, Boubacar Kadri, Baido Nassirou, Sheila K. West, Robin L. Bailey, Jeremy D. Keenan and Thomas M. Lietman
    Citation: Parasites & Vectors 2015 8:535

    The Erratum to this article has been published in Parasites & Vectors 2016 9:327

  14. The virulent vector-borne disease, Gambian human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), is one of several diseases targeted for elimination by the World Health Organization. This article utilises human case data from ...

    Authors: Kat S. Rock, Steve J. Torr, Crispin Lumbala and Matt J. Keeling
    Citation: Parasites & Vectors 2015 8:532
  15. The role of mass drug administration (MDA) and the implementation of transmission reduction measures are essential to successfully control and eliminate a wide range of NTDs, including the ocular disease trach...

    Authors: Manoj Gambhir and Amy Pinsent
    Citation: Parasites & Vectors 2015 8:530
  16. Effective control of schistosomiasis remains a challenging problem for endemic areas of the world. Given knowledge of the biology of transmission and past experience with mass drug administration (MDA) program...

    Authors: David Gurarie, Nara Yoon, Emily Li, Martial Ndeffo-Mbah, David Durham, Anna E. Phillips, H. Osvaldo Aurelio, Josefo Ferro, Alison P. Galvani and Charles H. King
    Citation: Parasites & Vectors 2015 8:529
  17. Mathematical models of parasite transmission can help integrate a large body of information into a consistent framework, which can then be used for gaining mechanistic insights and making predictions. However,...

    Authors: Brajendra K. Singh and Edwin Michael
    Citation: Parasites & Vectors 2015 8:522
  18. Visceral leishmaniasis has been targeted for elimination as a public health problem (less than 1 case per 10,000 people per year) in the Indian sub-continent by 2017. However, there is still a high degree of u...

    Authors: Lloyd A C Chapman, Louise Dyson, Orin Courtenay, Rajib Chowdhury, Caryn Bern, Graham F. Medley and T. Deirdre Hollingsworth
    Citation: Parasites & Vectors 2015 8:521