Building
a collective force
The word collective is both an adjective (done by people acting as a group) and a noun (a cooperative enterprise). Both speak to a core principle of The Task Force: joining forces with partners to have large-scale impact.
Tremendous global progress against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in recent decades illustrates the effectiveness of collective approaches. In FY 23 we marked several milestones in long-standing programs with private sector companies that donate medical treatments which The Task Force stewards to communities who need them.
In 2023, the Mectizan Donation Program (MDP), a partnership involving Merck & Co., Inc. and GSK, approved 376 million Mectizan® treatments for community distribution in 34 countries and territories around the world to eliminate onchocerciasis (river blindness) and lymphatic filariasis (LF).
Mectizan, donated by Merck, is used to eliminate onchocerciasis (river blindness) worldwide. For countries where LF and river blindness are both endemic, Mectizan is used in combination with albendazole (donated by GSK). In select other LF-endemic countries, Mectizan is administered in combination with albendazole and diethylcarbamazine. As of 2023, MDP shipped 13 billion Mectizan tablets to 58 countries. Four countries (Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico) have eliminated river blindness with Mectizan treatment. Three countries (Malawi, Togo and Yemen) have eliminated LF with Mectizan and albendazole, and others are making significant progress toward eliminating these diseases.
By 2023, efforts to prevent and treat the blinding disease of trachoma had resulted in 18 countries having eliminated trachoma as a public health problem and reducing the number of people at risk of trachoma by 92 percent (since 2002). The Task Force’s International Trachoma Initiative (ITI), which stewards Pfizer’s donation of azithromycin to treat and prevent trachoma and partners with government, NGOs, nonprofits and the private sector to accelerate progress, has shipped over a billion doses of antibiotic to 40 countries where more than 300 million people have been treated since the beginning of the program.
Another Task Force partnership involves the donation of deworming treatments by Johnson & Johnson and GSK to control soil-transmitted helminth (intestinal worm) infections. In 2023, 365 million doses were donated through this partnership. To maximize the benefit of this donation program, The Task Force’s Children Without Worms program provides technical assistance to country partners to develop capacity and use epidemiological evidence to guide programming.
A Task Force neglected tropical disease program focused on operational research (the Neglected Tropical Diseases Support Center) embarked on a new private-sector partnership to develop commercial serosurveillance kits, facilitating availability of such kits for integrated serosurveillance especially for programmatic use. With financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the partnership with the company Tetracore aims to develop kits to test for multiple infectious diseases, including SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), HIV and others.
A cross-sector initiative known as the MedSurplus Alliance provides a way for healthcare and life sciences industry organizations to donate quality medical products rather than dispose of them, reaching people in 49 countries in fiscal year 2023. One of the partnerships, Kits4Life, involves more than a dozen companies that donated a total of 68,982 items—supplies, medical devices and equipment—impacting over 1.5 million people in 25 countries. MSA’s standards and accreditations ensure that Medical Surplus Recovery Organization donation processes meet globally recognized standards, promote accountability and improve global health outcomes.
Philip’s First Encounter with Oncho
When Philip Kutjok was a teenager, he remembers witnessing a distant relative going blind in his hometown in South Sudan. At that time, he did not know what was causing the person he cared about to go blind, but he could see the devastating physical and mental toll blindness was taking on him, other family members, and the community. Kutjok was inspired by this experience to pursue a medical career, and specifically strengthening medical laboratory capacity to help combat outbreaks of such dangerous infectious diseases such as Ebola, yellow fever, and COVID-19 in South Sudan.
Years later, when Philip was a Humphrey Fellow at Emory University, he was introduced to the world of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) while working in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and The Task Force for Global Health.
From Kutjok’s work with NTDs at CDC and The Task Force, he learned about Onchocerciasis (oncho, commonly known as river blindness). And suddenly, he wondered if those in his community who suffered so much might have had oncho. Oncho is a neglected tropical disease that, according to the 2017 Global Burden of Disease Study, has caused vision loss for an estimated 1.15 million people – nearly all of them in Africa.
Kutjok when he was head of a private lab he helped establish in Juba, South Sudan, to work hand in hand with the Ministry of Health. The lab provided COVID-19 screening services for travelers as well as for most oil companies operating in the country. In the photo, you can see Kutjok, the South Sudan Minister of Presidential Affairs at the time who came to visit the lab, and a fellow colleague in action. Photo courtesy: Philip Kutjok
Next-Gen Tool Supporting Communities to Eliminate Oncho
In June 2023, Kutjok joined a group of 15 scientists from Africa and representatives from the U.S. CDC for a training session at Smith’s campus in Northampton, Massachusetts, to help scientists use new tools to diagnose river blindness and help them eliminate oncho.
The new tool and protocol for testing were developed at Smith College and University Hospital Bonn, funded through the Coalition for Operational Research on Neglected Tropical Diseases at The Task Force for Global Health with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The training was led by Gates Professor of Biological Sciences at Smith College, Steven Williams, who had personally helped to develop the new protocol.
Small flies known as black flies spread oncho to humans through bites. To find out if the disease is present in a community, health workers catch flies, remove their heads and test the heads for DNA which indicates the presence of the parasite. The June training sessions kicked off with a demonstration of how to correctly do the test.
“The other trainees brought a very high-level of skill to the sessions,” Kutjok said. “One of the scientists from Tanzania gave us all tips on how to separate the head from the body of the fly. I’d never done that before.”
To Stop MDA or Not To Stop MDA?
The new tool and protocol for testing for oncho promises more accurate and cost-effective testing for the disease. When widely deployed, the improved test will help scientists and health workers to better target critical treatments, while allowing resource-constrained health systems to spend more efficiently.
Kutjok is excited by the test’s improved precision and the profound benefits it offers for people and communities impacted by oncho.
“Better testing allows you to concentrate your efforts where they’re needed,” he said. “When you eliminate oncho from a community, you’re eliminating one of the barriers that prevents people from thriving. You’re making it easier for people to work and for children to go to school.”
“There are countries that are in different stages when it comes to oncho elimination and control,” said Kutjok.” “There are people who have already started the treatment with mass drug administration (MDA) and they want a tool to help them address the question as to when to stop administering medications. The MDA can go on for a long time. Maybe 12 years. 15 years or more. They don’t know when to stop the MDA. It is very expensive to keep going without stopping.”
Recently, Philip had a chance encounter with a family member who suspects that his relative went blind because of oncho since the relative resides in an oncho-endemic area. Presently, Philip has returned to South Sudan, and still works with The Task Force, with support from USAID, to facilitate lab training on the new techniques for testing oncho.
Philip is constantly motivated to continue strengthening medical laboratory support so that communities like his own in South Sudan can be protected from blindness, suffering and other debilitation caused by oncho and other neglected tropical diseases.
