Drug companies, philanthropists, national governments and the World rnHealth Organization (WHO) are coordinating to tackle neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) such as sleeping sickness, Chagas disease, leprosy and river blindness. In a joint announcement on 30 January, the WHO laid out a road map to control or eliminate ten NTDs by 2020, and drug companies announced expansions and extensions to drug-donation programmes amounting to 1.4 billion treatments a year. The Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation says that it will give US$363 million over five years for NTD research. See go.nature.com/ksscbg for more.
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