Biomed Diagnostics Honors World NTD day

Monday, February 1st, 2021

1 Billion people become very sick or die every year from Neglected Tropical Diseases.

These illnesses are caused parasitic, viral, and bacterial infections. Primarily Affecting the world’s poorest people, NTDs impair physical and cognitive development, contribute to mother and child illness and death, make it difficult to farm or earn a living, and limit productivity in the workplace. As a result, NTDs trap the poor in a cycle of poverty and disease — stops economic and social development in these important countries.

Biomed Diagnostics has developed culture diagnostics specifically to support doctors working in these low resource settings. InTray and InPouch simplify the process to identify and diagnose infections in a field-based setting, with limited equipment and refrigeration. 

The global health community is also celebrating the progress achieved under the first WHO NTD roadmap (2012–2020). The efforts of humanitarian organizations such as FIND, WHO and Medicines Sans Frontiers to fight NTDs have resulted in 500 million people no longer needing NTD interventions.   Investment in neglected diseases is deemed a “premium buy” in public health, as it lifts people and economies out of the grips of disease.

More needs to be done, and the work requires engagement with multiple stakeholders, including policy makers and donors. Just last year MSF completed the MSF MiniLab project and begins the rollout in 2021 of  small-scale, quality-assured, stand-alone, and transportable clinical bacteriology laboratory that can be easily used by non-experts to conquer NTDs.  Biomed joins FIND in supporting Dr. Tedros and Dr. Mwele in their “pledge to change lives for good” and #BeatNTDs.