Elimination of tropical disease through surveillance and response

In 2011, the World Health Organization (WHO) Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) and its partners among other influential organizations, adopted a roadmap for control, elimination and eradication [1]. Inspired by this roadmap, global health leaders, including the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of major pharmaceutical companies, Bill Gates of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, WHO Director General Margaret Chan and senior government officials from both endemic and donor countries, signed the London Declaration, which represents an unprecedented commitment to control or eliminate 10 diseases by the end of this decade [2]. All stakeholders believe in charting a new course toward health and sustainability among the world’s poorest communities offering them a stronger, healthier future through implementation of the declaration. The goal is to eradicate blinding trachoma, leprosy, human African trypanosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis globally by 2020, while rabies, endemic treponematoses (yaws), Chagas disease, visceral leishmaniasis, onchocerciaisis and schistosomiasis are targeted for elimination at the regional level at the same time [1,3]. More recently, a growing number of countries has adopted malaria elimination as a goal in response to the global malaria elimination programme [4]. For example, the African Union’s 2007 “Africa Malaria Elimination Campaign”, the recent declaration by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation of reinstating global eradication as a long-term objective, and the reiterated support by the Director General of WHO, have all reinforced the goal of local elimination, as well as global eradication not only as a vision, but also as a realistic, long-term objective [5,6]. Success would represent one of the most cost-effective means to lift more than 1 billion people out of poverty and prevent needless suffering among future generations [3,4].Elimination of a disease is defined as reducing a locally acquire