WHO Releases Three Online Products To Support Implementation Of NTD Programmes

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has released three online resources to help countries improve the execution of NTD programmes: an interactive dashboard, an online training course, and a mobile application. This dynamic data visualisation tool depicts WHO Member States', territories', and areas' progress towards NTD control, elimination, and eradication. Country profiles are divided into five sections, which include: general information about the country, endemicity and programmatic status of all NTDs, integration and mainstreaming of NTDs; progress towards overarching and cross-cutting NTD targets; the burden of NTDs, including cases, deaths, and DALYs; prevention, treatment, and care provided to people requiring NTD interventions; and donated medicines provided to countries through WHO.

The dashboard supplements the NTD road map tracker, another WHO interactive data visualisation tool for tracking progress towards the NTD road map 2021-2030 implementation. Maps, charts, and progress bars for the four overarching indicators and selected cross-cutting indicators are included. Both dashboards are accessible via WHO's NTD website's Data, Platforms, and Tools page. This new online training course aims to assist the global NTD community in adopting and implementing the companion road map document: Ending Neglect to Achieve the SDGs: A Framework for Monitoring and Evaluating Progress of the Road Map for Neglected Tropical Diseases 2021-2030. The so-called M&E structure tries to make tracking progress against stated goals easier while also allowing for course changes as necessary. Learning the ideas of this framework will help NTD intervention implementers to connect their efforts with WHO's objective of strengthening national information systems and contributing to the creation of a global health data hub.

The workshop seeks to enable the mainstreaming of M&E within health information systems and emphasises the importance of M&E in NTD interventions. It finishes with a section on looking ahead, identifying gaps, and determining future 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. 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.