Since its establishment in 1948, the World Health Organization (WHO) has organized a series of expert committee meetings to address individual tropical diseases that are included in WHO’s list of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in order to formulate appropriate evidence-based control strategies. Between 1948 and 2012, as many as 66 resolutions have been adopted for individual diseases. In response to trends in the global public-health agenda—notably primary health care in the 1970s and the Millennium Development Goals in the 2020s—WHO established the Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases in 2005. The aim was to contribute to poverty alleviation and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by addressing 17 NTDs in an integrated manner rather than by vertical disease-specific programmes.
Since then, WHO has led a dynamic trend in the global community to overcome NTDs, including organization of the first global partners meeting on NTDs in 2007, publication of the first WHO report on NTDs in 2010 and in 2012 the WHO roadmap to accelerate work towards the 2015 and 2020 targets for control, elimination and eradication of NTDs, and the announcement in 2013 of the London Declaration by 13 pharmaceutical companies and various donors and partners, and the publication of the second WHO report on NTDs. In May 2013, the World Health Assembly adopted the first resolution to call for increased efforts and support to control, eliminate and eradicate NTDs as a whole, contrary to the past disease-specific resolutions.
The present paper is intended to introduce Japanese audiences in the field of public health to this 66th World Health Assembly Resolution on NTDs and to the work of WHO in leading the global trend towards control and elimination of NTDs.