India has joined the world to Light Up Qutub Minar as a sign of unity to combat the Neglected Tropical Diseases. The second annual World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day will be marked on January 30, 2021.
- The day highlights the global community’s commitment to end the NTD. The diseases cause immeasurable suffering among the world’s most marginalized communities.
- One in five people around the world are affected by NTDs.
- According to the Union Health Ministry, India is home to the world’s largest absolute burden of at least 11 of these major neglected tropical diseases. These diseases debilitate, disfigure, and can even be fatal to those affected.
- Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) include several parasitic, viral, and bacterial diseases that cause substantial illness for more than one billion people globally.
- Affecting the world’s poorest people, NTDs impair physical and cognitive development, contribute to mother and child illness and death, make it difficult to farm or earn a living, and limit productivity in the workplace. As a result, NTDs trap the poor in a cycle of poverty and disease.
- Dengue, Rabies, Trachoma, Buruli ulcer, Leprosy, Chagas disease are some of the neglected tropical diseases.
