Advocacy

As part of its mission, DNDi advocates for enhanced political leadership, increased resources, and an enabling policy environment to stimulate research and development (R&D) for neglected diseases. DNDi actively advocates for sound policies that will enable greater needs-driven R&D, including appropriate incentives and financing mechanisms, innovative regulatory pathways that will expedite access, and open innovation approaches to intellectual property management that ensure the widest possible sharing of research knowledge and data.

 

DNDi POLICY BRIEF, April 2012

Transforming Individual Successes into Sustainable Change to Ensure Health Innovation for Neglected Patients:
Why an Essential Health R&D Convention Is Needed

 

U.S. ADVOCACY

The U.S.'s Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) Program, under the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is the main U.S. government body addressing the urgent health needs of people suffering from NTDs.  Despite its helpful work, the USAID NTD Program includes only 5 of the world's 17 NTDs, and excludes the three NTDs with the highest death rates - African sleeping sickness, Chagas disease, and visceral leishmaniasis (kala azar) - which are the core diseases focused on by DNDi.

DNDi North America advocates for the inclusion of these deadly diseases, as well as all NTDs, into the U.S.'s NTD Program, and also calls for the U.S. government to fund late-stage drug and other product development for these fatal NTDs, as it does for other diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

In February 2012, the White House proposed its U.S. fiscal year 2013 (FY2013) budget, which targeted the NTD Program with a nearly 25% cut - one of the single largest percentage funding cuts in global health.  DNDi North America calls for, not only restoration of this funding but, an increase to the original FY2012 request of $100 million by President Obama.

Read an opinion piece by Rachel Cohen, Regional Executive Director of DNDi North America, calling for further U.S. government support for deadly NTDs: "The US Government and research and development for neglected tropical diseases: Most neglected patients still falling through the cracks"

DNDi North America advocacy to the U.S. government:

April 2012: DNDi North America letter to the U.S. Senate State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee, requesting FY2013 U.S. NTD budget restoration and increase.

March 2012: DNDi North America testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, requesting FY2013 U.S. NTD budget restoration and increase.

April 2011: DNDi North America testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, emphasizing the urgent need for the USAID NTD Program to incorporate the NTDs with the highest death rates – sleeping sickness, Chagas, and visceral leishmaniasis.