You’ve Probably Never Heard About Neglected Tropical Diseases

“It seems to like the only thing that is common between these diseases is the fact that they attack the poorest of the poor in the society or community because they’re not cause by any common factor, and they don’t affect any particular part of the body.”

Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are a group of parasitical, viral and bacterial diseases that are infectious in nature and primarily affect the poorest section of the society. They impair physical and cognitive development, contribute to mother and child illness and death, make it difficult to farm or earn a living, and limit productivity in the workplace. As a result, NTDs trap the poor in a cycle of poverty and disease.

Globally NTDs affect over 1 billion people. While India accounts for 18% of the population, it accounts nearly 50% of the total burden on NTDs.

If Neglected Tropical Diseases account for nearly 1 billion cases, why are they still ‘neglected’?

The primary reason for this transgression is that they do not affect the wealthier nations who have a greater hegemony over the world politics. Hence since these diseases aren’t public health problems in the bigger nations, they have been historically neglected. Moreover, these diseases do not generally account for the primary reason of death for the patients, hence, they aren’t direct killers, they tend to be neglected.

Are Neglected Tropical Diseases really gender biased?

Unfortunately, yes! ‘Gender plays a conspicuous role for many of the NTDs, and there is considerable variance in morbidity and mortality rates for males and females by disease’. The primary reason for this is that gender roles are culturally constructed. This means that ethnically, men and women in poor areas are exposed to different infections for different periods of time.

So how do you solve the problem of NTDs?

Sanitation is the clearest and surest link to us controlling NTDs. Most countries facing the burden of NTDs have not prioritised clean water and sanitary living conditions for a large part of their population. The WHO has a comprehensive set of targets for 2030 regarding NTDs. You can read them here.

Tune into the NTD special episode on our podcast Conversations on Public Health to delve in deeper. You can stream our episodes from Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from.