Jet d’eau in the sign of tropical diseases
The Colosseum in Rome, Niagara Falls and the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio will also take part in the promotion. Neglected tropical diseases such as river blindness, leprosy, dengue fever or schistosomiasis affect 1.7 billion people worldwide, i.e. one in five people, according to the Service de la solidarité Internationale of the Canton of Geneva.
There is often no treatment or vaccination for these serious diseases because they affect the poorest sections of the population and are neglected by pharmaceutical research.
Established in 2003 by Médecins Sans Frontières and the Institut Pasteur in Geneva, the Medicines Against Neglected Diseases Foundation (DNDi) has developed nine “revolutionary new treatments” as it goes on.
Great need for medicines
Sleeping sickness, which is caused by the bite of the tsetse fly and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in central Africa over the last century, is on the way to elimination, according to the DNDi foundation. For many diseases, however, there are still no available drugs that are accessible to the affected population.
The canton of Geneva invests more than one million francs a year in projects that, among other things, enable the development of new treatment methods for these diseases. In this context, he actively supports the work of DNDi in Africa, it said.