The U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Neglected Tropical Disease Control Program is behind the distribution of medicines to more than 14 million people in four African nations affected with lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis, trachoma, onchocerciasis, and soil-transmitted helminths.
Largely unknown in developed nations, the diseases cause severe disability and suffering to millions of the world's poorest people.
Its first year of operations in 2007 saw the distribution of over 36 million treatments worth more than $400 million to more than 14 million people in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, and Niger as well as 10 million people in Uganda alone.
The medicines were donated by Merck, GSK, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer.
The program will reach Haiti, Southern Sudan and Sierra Leone this year and will be expanded to about 40 million people over five years in Africa, Asia and Latin America, according to the Research Triangle Institute, which administers the program.
