The World Health Organization (WHO) has revealed that, as of 2025, only 58 countries have met the 2030 target of eliminating at least one Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD), with Togo achieving the rare milestone of eliminating more than one and progressing toward four.
Dr María Rebollo Polo, Team Leader for the Expanded Special Project for the Elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases (ESPEN) at the WHO Regional Office for Africa, disclosed this ahead of the annual REMAPSEN Media Forum on NTDs, scheduled for January 2026 in Cotonou.
She described the progress as significant, noting that having at least one African country demonstrate such resilience is an encouraging step toward achieving the global elimination targets.
“And our targets were that by 2030, we were going to reach that at least 100 countries would have eliminated at least one disease. Well, as of today, there is already 58 countries in the world that has eliminated at least one disease, one neglected tropical disease.
And there are some countries such as, for example, Togo that has eliminated more than one disease, up to four diseases and more,” she said.
However, Dr Polo noted that the continent is lagging in meeting the “no-requisition-for-intervention” target, revealing that only 32 percent has been achieved out of the projected 90 percent.
She described the shortfall as worrying, stressing that it does not present an encouraging picture for the region.
“One of our targets was that we were going to see 90% of people no longer requiring interventions between 2010 and 2030. As of today, we are in 32% of people no longer requiring interventions. That is not necessarily a very good progress, which means that by 2030, we are not going to meet the 90%. It means that in 2010, we had 2 billion people, more than 2,000 million people requiring treatment against NTDs. And there has been a decrease of almost 700 million people that no longer require interventions against neglected tropical diseases, because we have been able to release them from these diseases,” she explained.
On the challenge of medicine distribution to beneficiaries, Dr Polo praised some African countries for adopting local strategies to ensure medicines reached communities without expiring, following the withdrawal of USAID sponsorship.
According to her, many countries trained local personnel to help distribute the medications, while others integrated distribution into the primary healthcare system.
“In Benin, they were using the school platform and the community health workers that were already trained for other diseases. In Ethiopia, they integrated into the primary healthcare system and they combined these campaigns such as vaccination, malaria testing, insecticide-treated bed nets, malnutrition screening, vitamin A supplementation and services for pregnant and lactating women. They integrated it with NTDs. They also did joint polio reactivation campaign, reaching 6,000 CO2 children. And doing that, they managed to distribute all the NTD medicines without letting these medicines expire,” she indicated.
Africa is still far from meeting global targets to eliminate neglected tropical diseases. Continued action is crucial to ensure more communities are freed from these preventable diseases, the World Health Organization pushes.
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