The World Health Organization (WHO) has published three online resources to strengthen implementation of programmes for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) at country level: an interactive dashboard, an online training course, and a mobile application.
Interactive dashboard – NTD country profiles
This interactive data visualization tool illustrates the progress of WHO Member States, territories and areas towards control, elimination and eradication of NTDs.
Country profiles are divided into five sections containing:
- general information about the country, endemicity and programmatic status of all NTDs, integration and mainstreaming of NTDs;
- status of progress against overarching and cross-cutting targets for NTDs;
- burden of NTDs including cases, deaths and DALYs;
- prevention, treatment and care provided to people requiring interventions against NTDs; and
- donated medicines provided to countries through WHO.
The dashboard includes information spanning from 1980 to date, and can be accessed here.
The dashboard complements the NTD road map tracker, another WHO interactive data visualization tool for tracking progress towards implementation of the NTD road map 2021–2030. It includes maps, charts and progress bars for the four overarching indicators and selected cross-cutting indicators.
Both dashboards can be accessed through the Data, platforms and tools page on WHO’s NTD website.
Online course on NTD monitoring & evaluation framework
This new online training course aims to support the global NTD community to take up and implement the companion road map document: Ending the neglect to attain the Sustainable Development Goals: a framework for monitoring and evaluating progress of the road map for neglected tropical diseases 2021–2030.
The so-called M&E framework aims to facilitate tracking of progress against set goals while enabling course corrections to be made wherever necessary.
Learning the concepts of this framework will enable implementers of NTD interventions to align their efforts with WHO’s vision of strengthening national information systems and contribute to building a world health data hub at the global level. The course aims to facilitate mainstreaming of M&E within health information systems and emphasizes that M&E are integral components of interventions against NTDs. It concludes with a section on looking forward, identifying gaps and research needs.
WHO invites all interested parties – public health practitioners, programme managers, researchers, country representatives, and representatives of international organizations and non-State actors – to take this course.
Topics discussed include:
- the Theory of Change for achieving the road map goals;
- types of indicators for monitoring and evaluation of NTDs;
- quantitative and qualitative approaches to monitoring and evaluation of NTDs; and
- strategic areas of analysis for comprehensive programme evaluations for NTDs.
The course comprises six video-lectures and other downloadable resources available, and lasts approximately 4 hours. A Record of Achievement will be issued to participants who score at least 80% in the final assessment.
The course can be directly accessed here, or through the NTD channel on the OpenWHO platform, where several other training resources are available.
Mobile application – supply chain management of NTD health products
A mobile application has been developed to facilitate the uptake by national, regional and district and community-level stakeholders of the standard operating procedures (SOPs) for supply chain management of health products for NTDs.
The intention is to help health workers improve their skills in handling, delivering and managing NTD commodities – medicine and diagnostics – and provide an entry point for managing essential health products for communicable and noncommunicable disease health programmes.
The App is available for both iOS and Android platforms, and is expected to facilitate the effective use of these SOPs by national health staff and their implementing partners.
Areas covered include: selection of health products, quantification and forecasting, supply planning and procurement to final delivery and consumption, reporting from primary health care units to national levels, and compliance with accountability and transparency requirements as a guarantee of the sustainability of the supply chain for donated health products.
The App complements the Standard operating procedures for supply chain management of health products for neglected tropical diseases amenable to preventive chemotherapy and the online training course available on the OpenWHO platform. It contains:
- training modules and materials;
- the complete SOP document;
- the individual SOPs; and
- job aids.
Please access and download the App by clicking on these two links:
- Android phones users
- iPhone users
