GENEVA — Progress against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) is real but "uneven and fragile", and several diseases are off course to meet their 2030 targets, the World Health Organization said in its Global Report on Neglected Tropical Diseases 2026, published on Wednesday — a mid-term evaluation of the WHO road map for 2021–2030.

Source: Health Policy Watch, reporting the WHO report, Nov 4, 2026

In 2024, NTDs affected around 1.41 billion people — a 19% reduction since 2020. By June 2026, 63 countries had eliminated at least one NTD, and Togo became the first country in the world to eliminate four diseases. Cases of sleeping sickness (human African trypanosomiasis) have dropped by 98% since 1999, while Guinea worm disease fell to a record low of just 10 human cases in 2025.

Source: WHO Global Report on NTDs 2026, via Health Policy Watch

WHO counts some 21 neglected tropical diseases — conditions that predominantly affect people living in poverty, or in remote or fragile settings, and are often called diseases of poverty. They range from mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue and chikungunya, whose transmission has soared with urbanisation and climate change, to river blindness (onchocerciasis), leprosy and sleeping sickness, where big inroads towards elimination have been made. Schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminths impose a heavy burden of illness and disability, and snakebite envenoming and rabies are also on the list, with extremely high mortality rates — a list Indian and Punjabi readers will recognise, since dengue, leprosy, rabies and snakebite are all present in India.

Source: Health Policy Watch, Nov 4, 2026

Three disease-specific indicators achieved their 2025 milestones: chikungunya vaccine development, reduced dengue case fatality rates, and the availability of WHO-recommended polyspecific antivenoms for snakebites.

Source: WHO Global Report on NTDs 2026, via Health Policy Watch

But the pace of progress is "insufficient to achieve most 2030 targets, particularly in relation to financing, mainstreaming into health systems, surveillance and extending interventions to populations in fragile and hard-to-reach settings", the report says. Lack of finance is the biggest barrier; conflict and displacement are also significant constraints, climate change is expanding the geographical spread of vector-borne diseases, and extreme weather can disrupt service delivery. Many NTD interventions are not part of national health systems or universal health coverage packages in most endemic countries, and weak surveillance, supply-chain constraints and the loss of specialist expertise weaken the response further.

Source: Health Policy Watch, Nov 4, 2026

"Sustainability has emerged as the defining constraint of our time, one that could delay the achievement of the 2030 targets," said Dr Daniel Ngamije Madandi, WHO's director of Malaria and NTDs. "New barriers demand innovative solutions, yet I am confident that the momentum generated by the road map endorsed by the World Health Assembly in 2020, together with its inherent flexibility, is strong enough to continue guiding the global response to the public health challenges posed by this diverse group of diseases and conditions throughout the remainder of the decade."

Source: Dr Daniel Ngamije Madandi, WHO, via Health Policy Watch

What happens next

The report lands days before governments gather for COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye (November 9–20), where the health costs of climate change — including the expanding range of mosquito-borne NTDs such as dengue and chikungunya — are on the agenda. For the 2030 targets to stay reachable, WHO's report points to money first: sustained financing, bringing NTD care inside national health systems and health-coverage packages, and reaching people in conflict and hard-to-reach settings before the gains of the last decade stall.

Source: Health Policy Watch, Nov 4, 2026