Pan American Health Organization's Regional Strategic Framework for addressing neglected diseases in neglected populations in Latin America and the Caribbean

The neglected diseases (NDs) need to be placed much higher on the agendas of the Ministries of Health and other organizations which are capable of effective action. Pan American Health Organization's plan seeks to strengthen surveillance, prevention, and control systems for NDs, with expected positive collateral benefits to other surveillance and control programs in Ministries of Health. Multi-disease, integrated, inter-sectoral, and inter-programmatic approaches need to be field-tested with pilot projects in communities. If the pilot projects are successful, these approaches will help optimize the use of scarce financial and human resources for communicable disease control in countries of the Region. Increased awareness of the importance and impact of the NDs in countries of the Region should help create or consolidate space and resources for these ND programs to continue into the future. Community-based projects should count with an ample number of local partners (non-governmental development organizations, church and community groups, local politicians) and perhaps other international partners to secure the continuance of prevention and control activities into the future. Cost and cost-effectiveness analysis of the data resulting from the pilot projects will be necessary to evaluate the multi-disease, inter-programmmatic and/or inter-sectoral and integrated interventions and their resulting synergies; if economically successful they should encourage investment by the private and public sector to address NDs in marginalized populations.