Remembering the NTDs on “Public Health Thank You Day”
By Peter Hotez, M.D., Ph.D. Dr. Hotez is the President of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, Director of the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, and founding Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. He is also Baker Institute Fellow in Disease and Poverty at Rice University, and University Professor at Baylor University, all located in the state of Texas.
In honor of Public Health Thank You Day, Dr. Hotez sits down to talk about his work on neglected tropical diseases and their importance in global public health initiatives:
The neglected tropical diseases – the “NTDs” – are a group of tropical infections that disproportionately plague the world’s poorest people in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. I used to refer to the NTDs as “the most important diseases you have never heard” until Ebola virus infection became a household name.
But Ebola virus infection is not even close to being the world’s most common NTD. Today, every single person living in extreme poverty suffers from at least one NTD. Many, like Ebola, are killer diseases such as African sleeping sickness and kala-azar. Indeed these NTDs killed hundreds of thousands of people in sub-Saharan Africa during the last half of the 20th century, most of them like today’s Ebola victims who live amidst conflict or in post-conflict countries and regions.
Still other NTDs are chronic and debilitating conditions such as hookworm, schistosomiasis, elephantiasis, river blindness and trachoma that thwart economic development because of their ability to damage agricultural workers and growing children, or adversely affect pregnancies and women’s health.
In the years following the launch of the 2000 Millennium Development Goals, the global public health community began waking up to the importance of NTDs and opportunities to control or eliminate them. A major approach has been to simultaneously target intestinal worms, schistosomiasis, elephantiasis, river blindness, and trachoma, with partial or complete so-called “rapid impact packages” of medicines administered once or twice yearly. The World Health Organization sometimes refers to this approach as preventive chemotherapy. Preventive chemotherapy is highly cost-effective in part because the major pharmaceutical companies are generously donating essential NTD medicines for these diseases and because they have a great safety profile and can be administered by community health workers or even school teachers. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) recently announced that more than one billion people have received these medicines through their support, while the British Department for International Development (DFID) has also provided large scale funding as well as the private END (Ending Neglected Disease) Fund. Our Global Network for NTDs is simultaneously providing strategically placed advocacy to promote NTD awareness and support for other European nations, and some of the BRICS countries.
In parallel, there is an urgent need to conduct research and development (R&D) for new NTD drugs, diagnostics and vaccines. We have seen the horrible consequences of not investing in these products for West Africa. As a result we face serious delays in getting new Ebola virus drugs and vaccines to the people who desperately need them. But Ebola is not alone: Our Sabin Vaccine Institute and Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, based at the National School of Tropical Medicine of Baylor College of Medicine has a portfolio of new vaccines to combat several other NTDs including hookworm infection, schistosomiasis, Chagas disease, leishmaniasis, and West Nile virus infection. We have been successful at early stage development for these new vaccines, but like the Ebola virus vaccine problem we need to refine and improve the roadmap and business model for rapidly accelerating their final product and development and licensure. We have started to work with the US State Department to see whether we might enlist key research enterprises of foreign governments to partner with us in order to advance such vaccines – a concept I refer to as “vaccine diplomacy”.
We have a long way to go. Preventive chemotherapy is still reaching less than 50 percent of vulnerable populations who deserve access to essential NTD medicines, while R&D for new NTD vaccines and drugs is mostly at a nascent stage. In West Africa this fall of 2014 we have seen the dramatic consequences of doing nothing for NTD threats such as Ebola. It is an especially tragic situation that we do not have anti-Ebola virus vaccines stockpiled and ready to roll out even though the technology has been available for at least a decade in some instances. My hope is that the humanitarian crisis created by possibly not having an Ebola vaccine in time for this 2014-15 epidemic might reignite the global public health and scientific community to rethink the strategic and economic importance of new NTD products.
On November 24, Research!America and public health organizations and advocates will celebrate Public Health Thank You Day, a chance to recognize public health professionals who work round-the-clock to protect the health of all Americans. To learn more, visit www.publichealththankyouday.org.
A First Glimpse of the “Armadillo’s Ears”
By Peter J. Hotez
An excerpt of a blog post by Peter J. Hotez, MD, PhD, published in The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas (TAMEST) blog. Peter Hotez, MD, PhD is the founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and professor of the Departments of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine (Research!America member) where he is also chief of a new Section of Pediatric Tropical Medicine and the Texas Children’s Hospital Endowed Chair of Tropical Pediatrics. Hotez is the president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and the Baker Institute Fellow in Disease and Poverty at Rice University.
Dr. Peter Hotez
Sabin Vaccine Institute and Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, National School of Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine.
The National School of Tropical Medicine, launched at Baylor College of Medicine in 2011, was established to offer a potent North American colleague to the century-old British tropical medicine schools in London and Liverpool and tropical disease institutes in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Basel, Hamburg, and elsewhere in Europe.
An essential cornerstone of the National School is translational research and development, with several core faculty members actively engaged in developing new diagnostics and vaccines for the 17 major diseases of poverty known as the neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). The NTDs represent a group of parasitic and related infections that actually cause poverty because of their long-term and disabling effects on childhood cognition and physical fitness and development, adult productive capacity, and the health of girls and women. They are the most common afflictions of the extremely poor in developing countries. Continue reading →
Neglected Tropical Diseases: Topic of Capitol Hill Briefing/Meetings
On June 17, Research!America hosted a Capitol Hill briefing on neglected tropical diseases in partnership with Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), Global Health Technologies Coalition (GHTC), The American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
Research!America also led a series of Hill meetings last week with influential congressional offices to discuss some of the successes of USAID’s NTD program and to highlight the need for continued investments. USAID’s NTD program – which was authorized by Congress in 2006 – has helped to deliver more than 580 million treatments to approximately 260 million people through mass drug administration campaigns. We were joined by Georgetown University, Baylor College of Medicine, the Global Network for NTDs, IMA World Health and the Latin America Society for Chagas (LASOCHA). The group – which represented a broad range of partners from organizations that implement USAID NTD programs to patient advocates to leading NTD expert, Dr. Peter Hotez – discussed the importance of the USAID NTD program to their work and updated staffers on emerging issues in NTD prevention and treatment. Continue reading →
West Nile Spike Reminds Us That Global Health Research Benefits Americans, Too
As reported in the Washington Post, the number of West Nile virus cases in the U.S. is on the rise. Traditionally a disease that affects people in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, 48 states in the U.S. have reported cases in 2012 alone. Nearly 2,000 cases and 87 deaths, including one Wednesday in DC, have been reported overall. The West Nile virus, a neglected tropical disease or NTD, can cause flu-like symptoms or, in severe cases, even brain damage.
Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, director of the Texas-based product development partnership Sabin Vaccine Institute, recently wrote a New York Times op-ed addressing the increasing thread of West Nile right here in the U.S., “Tropical Disease: The New Plague of Poverty.” As Hotez points out, West Nile is just one of several NTDs that have a presence in the United States. Dengue fever, another virus transmitted through mosquitoes, has been reported in Texas, Florida and Hawaii. A recent estimate finds that 300,000 individuals in the U.S. have Chagas disease, an infection transmitted through insects that can cause heart failure and even sudden death. These NTDs pose an immediate threat to the health of Americans, particularly in impoverished areas of the South where poorer sanitation and drainage systems allow NTD “carriers” to thrive.
NTDs can go undocumented for long periods of time, can be extremely debilitating and have inflicted a large toll on peoples’ health and economic stability around the world. NTDs paint an increasingly troubling picture for American health. Toxic and ineffective, or in some cases no treatments, exist for many of these NTDs, and better surveillance and monitoring is desperately needed. With little financial incentive, private companies are reluctant to invest in this research. However, there is hope. Federally funded researchers at the National Institutes of Health have identified a new drug that has the potential to treat Chagas disease. Additional clinical trials will determine its safety and efficacy for widespread use. Bloomberg recently reported that another PDP, the Dengue Vaccine Initiative, has developed four dengue vaccines that are currently undergoing clinical trials. Continuing to fund this type of research and development is critical to ensuring that the promise of these vaccines becomes a reality.
In an effort to raise awareness about the importance of funding for NTD research, Research!America hosted a joint forum this summer entitled “Global Health Research and Development and the Hidden Burden of Neglected Tropical Diseases in Texas.” Additional support, including robust federal funding, will result in new prevention and treatment methods that are urgently needed not only to improve the health of individuals around the world, but right here in our own backyards. Please let your congressional representative know that even in today’s tough economic environment, funding for global health and NTD research must be a higher national priority.
A video of Research!America’s Texas forum on neglected tropical diseases is available here.
