12.32

That’s not all folks…. more this afternoon, though not entirely sure what the set-up will be then.

12.31

Dr Chan:”Let us not be naive. The targets are achievable… but we must hold each other to account, so the scorecard.. is extremely important”.

Apparently Bill gates is a big fan of metrics, and wants to measure progress.

12.29

Bill: “We will be measuring progress.

“We have very ambitious goals that we’ve set… we have a nice little competition going on between polio and guinea worm [for eradication].

“The generosity and the cooperation that we’ve seen today is really going to make the difference.”

12.28

Q and A is over. Riz Khan sounds relieved it’s all gone to schedule.

Big thanks go to Bill, who now takes the stage.

12.27

Lots of plaudits going round the room, and Rob Walters is now up with a question. He works on eliminating trachoma with Pfizer.

“What matters to me is what we do from now on.. How do we coordinate ourselves on the ground from now on?”

This seems to me to be the nub of the problem, and where development is really needed.

Dr Chan. “Nobody likes to be coordinator. It’s one hell of a task to coordinate others.”

“It requires people to give up a bit of their own sovereignty. I just said to Bill, what did you do at the CEO round table?…Coordination is most effective at the country level, led by the Ministry.”

She doesn’t mention that there are lots of countries worldwide with less than adequate governments, and they might need an extra hand.

12.22

A Sri Lankan representative asks if we can include literacy in the program.

The US Dev agency representative says education is paramount. “It’s great to have a key intervention like the NTD campaign in the context of everything we’re doing.”

Bill Gates says the health interventions allow people to achieve when they go to school. Getting rid of hookworm has a massive effect on allowing kids to go to school, improves agriculture (as there are enough workers) and leads towards reaching Millenium Development Goals.

12.19

Someone is asking whether other industries, not just pharma, to engage with the NTD issue.

The reply comes from a drug company CEO – we’ve done this with a text-for-babies project. (I’m sure this isn’t what it sounds like!)

12.16

Save the Children asking “can we link NTD drugs with school health interventions”.

Dr Caroline Anstey, World Bank, says yes. “The school is very often the centre of the community” in rural areas, and could be a central distribution point for drugs, bednets, and more.

Dr Chan says alternative views of health systems are absolutely critical. She persuaded the CEO of GSK to donate 400 million doses of a drug by highlighting the effect the illness has on school-aged children.

12.12

Someone from Pfizer is in the audience. They’ve donated drugs for trachoma for years, and it turns out this drug could address childhood mortality as well.

12.11

Dr Chan agrees that addressing the root causes of water and sanitation and malnutrition is vital.

12.11

A representative from the Republic of South Sudan is speaking now, a country just 7 months old. He;s appealing to NGOs and other organisations to enhance South Sudan’s fledgling health service.

12.09

Everyone’s kept to their time limit, so it’s now a Q and A session for about 20 minutes.

12.08

Dr Jarbas Barbosa da Silva Jr, a Brazilian health minister.

He’s talking about community based delivery. He says the final step is the hardest – it’s easy to donate a few drugs, but elimination is difficult.

12.06

Dr Jorg Reinhart of Bayer

“It can take 10 years to bring a drug to market” he says. Collaboration is crucial to reach the 2020 target.

12.04

MSD CEO Kenneth Frazier:

This is the 25th anniversary of the methozan(sp) donation programme. It’s an example of what can be done, and provides lessons we can learn from, says Frazier.

He highlights the importance of measuring how successful the collaborators are, by using a scorecard.

He wants to realise “a vision of a future free of NTDs for millions of people”.

12.01

Novartis CEO Joseph Jimenez, talking about how leprosy donation is not just about donating the drug. Novartis are financing logistics and distribution. They have a “test-messaging supply system”. Since most rural areas have much better SMS coverage than internet, this makes a lot of sense.

11.58

Dr Caroline Anstey from the World Bank: “We’re talking about diseases and neglected people, and it is about how and if and whether we value them.”

745 million dollars financing over the next 5 years from the World Bank will help integrated healthcare. APOC will receive additional funding to treat river blindness. It’s prevented 600,000 people from going blind so far.

11.55

Also working to reduce cost of ambezone, which directly reduce cost for endemic countries in the long term.

11.54

Paul Carter from Gilead, talking about Visceral Leishmaniasis.

VL is responsible for more deaths worldwide than any other parasitic disease, bar malaria.

There’s a safe and effective treatment, ambezone, and over the next 5 years Gilead will cure 50,000 people with VL. They provide ambezone at cost to all endemic countries through the WHO.

11.53

Dr AFM Ruhal Haque, Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Bangladesh up now.

Bangladesh has lots of floods, which mozzies love. Bangladesh now has a vector (mozzy) management program to help with Dengue, HAT and others.

11.50

CEO of Sanofi, Christopher A Viehbacher.

“It’s not just a matter of providing drugs… We’ve provided scooters to MSF.. screening to 17 million people” and more.

“It’s one thing to work amongst us as competitors… Sharing libraries of compounds is extraordinarily difficult.”

They’re breaking down IP barriers and letting each other into databases on NTDs.

11.47

DNDi (Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative) up now, talking about how a coordinated R and D effort will save time and money.

We need additional money, he says, to move toward sustainable change.

11.45

William Weldon from Johnson and Johnson, talking about why research is needed. LF drugs currently only kill baby parasites; once they’ve grown to adults, they can’t be killed using existing treatments.

So JandJ will be doing R and D into a new, more effective LF drug.

11.43

Act three up in a minute. Haruo Naito said the unspoken then, although the mic was very close to his mouth so lots of people may have missed it.

For pharma companies, people suffering from NTDs are not potential customers. Cure them, and they will be.

That’s rather cynical, and I’m sure the motives are good, but it’s worth thinking about.

11.41

Haruo Naito, CEO of Eisai, a Japanese-based pharma company.

They are spending million dollars on producing drugs. “We love this tablet so much,” he says, and that’s how they convince shareholders to do it. It is long-term investment for people, societies and economies in developing countries to lift them to be middle income countries (who can presumably then buy their drugs).

11.38

Dr Alexandre Lourenco Jaime Manguele, Minister of Health in Mozambique is talking now.

Lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminths (STH) are endemic in Mozambique. Population-based trachoma is almost certainly endemic.

They hope to reach 100 percent coverage of LF and schisto treatment this year for schoolchildren.

By 2015 they hope to treat 27million people a year.

11.35

CEO of Merck, Dr Stefan Oschmann.

“Pharma comapnies obviously know something about RandD and producing drugs.”

Merck have been donating praziquantel for years to attack schistosomiasis. They are increasing their program by a factor of ten, to 250million tablets a year, and will work on a new paediatric formulation of the drug. Drug companies don’t usually do much work in developing drugs for NTDs, so this is excellent news.

11.31

Act 2 up now.

Dr Ariel Pablos-Mendez from US Agency for International Development.

US foreign aid fell last year, but Dr P-M says NTD donations have escalated since 2006 and are staying high. Again highlights integration.

11.28

The numbers: 0million from the Bill gates foundation over the next 5 years, and not just for research. Most of that will be for delivery programs, not the Gates Foundation’s normal focus.

11.27

Bill Gates up next. What makes NTDs different?

“The types of things announced… this is not a first”

“There’s a history, a v proud history of involvement, donations.”

“But what is unique about today is getting everybody on the same page.”

The countries involved will have to orchestrate their health systems to work together with the organisations donating the drugs.

Gates is showing us an image of someone with elephantiasis, bringing home the human impact of lymphatic filariasis. Kids with helminth infections have problems with brain development.

11.24

Sir Andrew Witty, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline.

Drug cos have been donating drugs for years, but in the last year 13 companies have come together to “ask what’s the maximum we can do here” for the WHO goals.

Intellectual property is being shared to help discover the next generation of medicines for NTDs.

There’s a timeline and a scorecard – companies can be checked.

11.22

Tanzania’s director of preventative services is speaking now, Dr Donan Mmbando.

“This event is very important to me personally and to my country.”

He thanks everyone involved, and highlights the importance of an integrated approach, ie, tackling several diseases at once. Many people suffer from more than one NTD.

11.19

UK government spend is going up from 50million pounds to 250million pounds on NTDs by 2015. O’Brien hopes today will inspire others to rise to challenge.

“This is the time to take ‘Neglected’ out of NTDs”

11.18

Gates foundation, the UAE and another donor have donated an extra million with the UK government to eradicate Guinea Worm. that means no more Guinea Worm, ever.

11.17

Stephen O’Brien, UK development secretary: “Belief isn’t enough. It’s got to be on evidence of what works and what achieves results”.

Pays tribute to academic expertise in the UK, which has provided evidence on how to best achieve results. Including our friends at the SCI.

11.15

Dr Margaret Chan says we can defeat NTDs now: “This is unbelievable. At a very difficult time, financially speaking, we are able to gather together to help people.”

Working with pharma cos and governments of endemic countires. She says not just relying on pharma donation is crucial – we need a multi-lateral effort.

“The do-good spirit is what is giving me a lot of optimism.”

“Today we are launching a roadmap, a roadmap that has been tested and has been proven effective.” (Presumably she means with previous eradications or guinea worm and river blindness, etc)

11.12

Riz Khan points out, as I did earlier, that even Bill Gates only gets a few minutes. Hopefully he won’t talk too fast for the liveblog to keep up, but steam may come off the keyboard.

11.11

If you prefer your updates audiovisually, watch the live stream here: http://www.unitingtocombatntds.org/

Or follow @sev1en on twitter.

11.10

There has already been a lot of work towards eliminating NTDs. The Schistosomiasis Control Initiative is one but there are many others.

11.08

Riz Khan points out that NTDs don’t get much say in the era of 24 hr news. More than a billion people – one in seven people in the world – are affected by these diseases. That’s why the world is here today.

11.06

About to start. Need a tech person. In the meantime, infographics!

http://www.unitingtocombatntds.org/ntd_infographic.pdf

11.02

You can now endorse the London Declaration on NTDs here.

The London Declaration promises to eliminate 4 NTDs, eradicate Guinea Worm, and control 5 more, all by 2020.

That’s just 8 years away.

10.58

Only three minutes to go…

10.46

Reading material

10.37

• Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General, World Health Organization
• CEOs of Nine Leading Pharmaceutical Companies
• Bill Gates, Co-Chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Senior Government Officials from Tanzania, Mozambique, Brazil and Zanzibar
• Stephen O’Brien, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, UK Department for International Development
• Dr. Bernard Pécoul, Executive Director, Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative
• Dr. Ariel Pablos-Méndez, Assistant Administrator for Global Health, US Agency for International Development
• Dr. Caroline Anstey, Managing Director, World Bank
• Moderated by: Riz Khan, Al Jazeera English

10.20

We are now set up with Wi-Fi and coffee in Central London. The event kicks off at 11am, so watch this space!