Togo News

Neglected Tropical Diseases Program Sustainability: Innovative Mechanisms for Private Sector Engagement

May 31st, 2018

In the last 10 years, donors including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have provided significant funding to combat neglected tropical diseases (NTD) in West Africa, resulting in a realistic goal of control and elimination by 2020. In an era of shrinking budgets for NTD surveillance and

It’s Time to Take Togo Off the WHO Trachoma List

February 28th, 2018

Trachoma is an eye infection caused by the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis. Although it is both treatable and preventable, trachoma remains a leading infectious cause of blindness worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) has set a global goal to eliminate trachoma as a public health problem in all countries by 2020. But what does it mean

Cross-Border Collaboration: Key for Sustaining Gains Against NTDs

January 31st, 2018

The excitement that surrounded the World Health Organization (WHO) announcement in 2017 that the Republic of Togo had become the first sub-Saharan African country to eliminate lymphatic filariasis (LF or elephantiasis) as a public health problem is slowly dying out as we contemplate the implications of this announcement. Ghana has also submitted its final dossier

A Roadmap for Taking Togo off the List of Trachoma-Endemic Countries

March 31st, 2017

A leading infectious cause of blindness worldwide, trachoma is a disease caused by the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis. Trachoma has not been considered a big problem in Togo because baseline studies in 2006, 2009, and 2011 had shown that the prevalence of trachomatous inflammation—follicular (TF) (an early form of the disease that indicates active trachoma infection)

Cross-Border Collaboration: Synchronizing Treatment for NTDs in West Africa

February 28th, 2017

After six years, during which over 429 million treatments were administered to over 202 million people, many of the six END in Africa-supported countries are ‘walking the final mile’ in the fight against several neglected tropical diseases (NTDs)—namely elephantiasis and trachoma—with plans to stop nationwide mass drug administration (MDA) for these two diseases by 2020.

Africa’s First Generation Free from Lymphatic Filariasis: Togo’s Triumph over an Infectious Disease

July 30th, 2016

Togo’s lymphatic filiariasis (LF) story began in 1997, when the World Health Assembly (WHA) passed a resolution calling for the “elimination of lymphatic filariasis as a public health problem.”[1] Although the idea of eliminating neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) such as LF was, at the time, unprecedented in Africa, and funding for such an endeavor was

Good news on NTDs

October 7th, 2015

END in Africa congratulates scientists on winning the 2015 Nobel Prize in medicine for advances in NTD and malaria drugs. The project also salutes Mexico for becoming the third country to have eliminated river blindness, joining Colombia the Ecuador. On Monday, October 5, 2015, the Nobel Committee of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm announced that three

Using TIPAC Data to Drive Resource Mobilization

July 30th, 2015

Getting people excited about the prospect of learning how to sift through and analyze complex data can be a tough sell. However, they tend to become more interested in getting trained once they begin to understand how data analytics and visualization can help them solve difficult problems. In Togo, such training has helped the national

Benchmarking Organizational Capabilities: Where to Begin?

June 30th, 2015

NTD Program Management and Sustainable Impact   Experience has shown that developing a Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) finance strategy that’s aligned with the country’s NTD Master Plan strengthens the latter and has a sustained, measurable impact. But effective finance strategies don’t happen overnight! Devising one requires a solid understanding of organizational capabilities as they related

Planning for elimination within the USAID NTD portfolio

May 20th, 2015

Most people aren’t very fond of transitions; indeed, some even avoid them. But managers of neglected tropical diseases (NTD) programs aren’t like most people. Not only do they welcome program transitions, they actually seek them out. Why? Because in the world of NTD control and elimination, transitions are powerful signs of program success. Successful national