Harare, 15 July 2015 - The meeting, which brought together NTD Program Managers and Data Managers from  Comoros, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Seychelles, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zanzibar, Zimbabwe, The Gambia, Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone was officially opened by the WHO Representative/IST ESA Coordinator a.i. Dr David Okello in Harare this morning.

The meeting aims to strengthen access and use of mapping data for programme decisions and actions; review, harmonise and consolidate  all the country mapping data into the Integrated National NTD Mapping Database System, analyzing it and generating co-endemicity and treatment maps; and to agree on methods of using mapping data to update NTD master plans, action plans for 2016 and joint request forms for NTD  medicines. An Integrated National NTD Mapping Database and Analyses System, which enables the harmonisation, consolidation and extensive analysis of mapping data; and  automates the generation of NTD maps including, endemicity and treatment maps has been developed by WHO. During this meeting, the capacity of countries to use the Integrated National NTD Mapping Database and Analyses System will be built, and countries will be supported to migrate their data sets into this system, which is a precursor to the WHO/AFRO NTD Mapping Portal, an online, interactive and real-time platform which is still being developed.

In his opening remarks, Dr Okello acknowledged the increased momentum and growing interest from the international community to put NTDs on the international development agenda including the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. He also commended the Governments of the 47 Member States of the WHO African Region for re-affirming their commitment and leadership towards attaining the NTD elimination goals in 2020 by adopting a resolution on NTDs, a strategic plan and regional strategy for NTDs covering the period 2014-2020.  Dr Okello encouraged the participants to make use of the 3 day workshop to learn as much as they can from the facilitators as the  workshop has been designed to build capacity to use new skills and improve career and programme. “ The facilitators who will provide the technical support in the next three days are experts. I urge you all to make use of them to acquire the necessary skill,” he said.

Strengthening the use of NTD mapping data to improve the impact of programme interventions is one of the major focuses of the WHO/AFRO NTD Mapping Initiative. This Mapping Project is the largest initiative aimed at assessing the prevalence of targeted diseases in the African region. The targeted NTDs are lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis, soil-transmitted helminthes, onchocerciasis, trachoma and loa loa. The mapping of NTDs is a critical and first step in understanding where at risk populations live in order to target available resources effectively and to achieve maximum impact on disease burden.