London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases

The London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases is a collaborative global health initiative launched on 30 January 2012 in London, inspired by the World Health Organization's roadmap to eliminate or prevent transmission of ten neglected tropical diseases by 2020. It brought together officials from the WHO, the World Bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, thirteen leading pharmaceutical companies, and government representatives from the United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Bangladesh, Brazil, Mozambique and Tanzania at a meeting held at the Royal College of Physicians, led by WHO Director-General Margaret Chan and Bill Gates. The declaration committed more than 785 million US dollars in research and development funding toward eliminating or controlling guinea worm disease, lymphatic filariasis, leprosy, African sleeping sickness, trachoma, schistosomiasis, soil-transmitted helminthiasis, Chagas disease, visceral leishmaniasis and river blindness, targeting an estimated 1.4 billion people living mainly in economically disadvantaged regions where these diseases are most prevalent.