This companion document to Ending the neglect to attain the Sustainable Development Goals: a road map for neglected tropical diseases 2021-2030 (“the road map”) aims to support a range of stakeholders – including countries in which neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are endemic, international organizations and non-State actors – to achieve the road map targets through a transdisciplinary, cross-cutting One Health approach. The document has six sections.

Financing the acceleration of the progress needed to reach the 2030 targets was highlighted throughout the global consultation on which the NTD road map 2021-2030 was based. For some time, a lack of resources has been seen as a significant barrier to control, elimination and eradication. This challenge has only been intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic; indeed, the pandemic has altered the course of many public health objectives for the near and long terms alike. In response to the need to raise the funding and resources highlighted by the global neglected tropical disease community, the World Health Organization prepared this rationale for global investment as an advocacy document to support and augment the implementation of the road map. This rationale was developed in an already complex funding landscape and in the context of a wide-ranging and diverse set of diseases. It was also prepared against a background of unprecedented cuts to aid budgets and shifting international priorities. This document sets out, therefore, to explain the socioeconomic value of investing in the fight against neglected tropical diseases and highlights priorities for global investment attention. Our work was guided by the need not only for additional funding and funders but also for the need to understand the current funding climate, in which value for money and the efficient use of resources to fill the most critical of gaps are more relevant than ever.

"The presence, or absence, of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) can be seen as a proxy for poverty and for the success of interventions aimed at reducing poverty. Today, coverage of the public-health interventions recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) against NTDs may be interpreted as a proxy for universal health coverage and shared prosperity - in short, a proxy for coverage against neglect. As the world's focus shifts from development to sustainable development, from poverty eradication to shared prosperity, and from disease-specific goals to universal health coverage, control of NTDs will assume an important role towards the target of achieving universal health coverage, including individual financial risk protection. Success in overcoming NTDs is a "litmus test" for universal health coverage against NTDs in endemic countries. The first WHO report on NTDs (2010) set the scene by presenting the evidence for how these interventions had produced results. The second report (2013) assessed the progress made in deploying them and detailed the obstacles to their implementation. This third report analyses for the first time the investments needed to achieve the scale up of implementation required to achieve the targets of the WHO Roadmap on NTDs and universal coverage against NTDs. INVESTING TO OVERCOME THE GLOBAL IMPACT OF NEGLECTED TROPICAL DISEASES presents an investment strategy for NTDs and analyses the specific investment case for prevention, control, elimination and eradication of 12 of the 17 NTDs. Such an analysis is justified following the adoption by the Sixty-sixth World Health Assembly in 2013 of resolution WHA6612 on neglected tropical diseases, which called for sufficient and predictable funding to achieve the Roadmap's targets and sustain control efforts. The report cautions, however, that it is wise investment and not investment alone that will yield success. The report registers progress and challenges and signals those that lie ahead. Climate change is expected to increase the spread of several vector-borne NTDs, notably dengue, transmission of which is directly influenced by temperature, rainfall, relative humidity and climate variability primarily through their effects on the vector. Investments in vector-borne diseases will avoid the potentially catastrophic expenditures associated with their control. The presence of NTDs will thereby signal an early warning system for climate-sensitive diseases. The ultimate goal is to deliver enhanced and equitable interventions to the most marginalized populations in the context of a changing public-health and investment landscape to ensure that all peoples affected by NTDs have an opportunity to lead healthier and wealthier lives."--Publisher's description.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 2015, embody a One-Health strategy -- healthy people living on a habitable planet. Extending beyond the social development emphasis of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which accelerated progress globally, though unequally, the SDGs also encompass a range of environmental and economic goals, with a health goal that is far more comprehensive than the infectious diseases and maternal/child health focus of the MDGs. To be achieved, the SDGs require resources and political commitment that is yet to be demonstrated. With a cost that could reach $5 trillion for the SDGs overall, achieving health targets will require a mix of increase domestic resources, including taxes on unhealthy foods and products, international assistance, and innovative financing. Annual reviews should identify and monitor threats to the SDGs, both internal contradictions and contradictory government policies such as discriminatory laws, and the necessary rights-based pathways forward. To improve accountability, health information systems with disaggregated data should be prioritized, along with independent monitoring and key governance indicators. Ambitious national benchmarks, drawing on WHO strategies and action plans, could provide markers of success for presently vague health targets. Three early indicators of progress on the health SDGs could be: 1) whether countries establish clear policies on universality, encompassing all people without discrimination, identifying and prioritizing populations with the least access; 2) whether universal health coverage fully incorporates population health; and 3) whether countries provide rapid and sustained increased funding for such necessities as adequate sanitation and nutritious food. A Framework Convention on Global Health, a global health treaty based in the right to health, could fill in critical gaps in the SDGs, creating accountability through capacity-building and compliance-enhancing mechanisms, establishing a financing framework, and ensuring right to health assessments and health in all policies. It could help establish a path forward based on equity and the right to health that would be truly transformative.