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£1.2 million partnership to address neglected tropical diseases in Africa

£1.2 million partnership to address neglected tropical diseases in Africa

Posted on 3 May 2023

Researchers at the University of York are part of a new £1.2 million project to support cost-effective and equitable investments for eliminating neglected tropical diseases in southern and eastern Africa.

The project will look to guide key decisions

Ministries of health, disease control programmes and other government bodies, face challenges on how to cost-effectively and equitably invest in disease elimination, and this is particularly difficult in areas that have many other health challenges that require funding.

The project will look at how to reliably guide resource allocation decisions, understand the value it will add, as well as estimate the costs and effects of alternative courses of actions.

New knowledge

The Centre of Health Economics (CHE) at the University, will partner with the Global Institute for Disease Elimination (GLIDE), and the East Central and Southern African Health Community (ECSA-HC) on Thanzi Labwino (‘Better Health’) (TLab), to establish partnerships between academic, policy, and community stakeholders for disseminating new knowledge on disease elimination.

The team also aims to improve capabilities among stakeholders to generate, interpret and use health economics evidence to inform disease elimination and resource allocation decisions.

Evidence

Professor Paul Revill, from the University of York’s Centre for Health Economics, said: “By collating existing knowledge and delivering innovative new research evidence, TLab aims to advance the field of global health economics and NTD modelling.

“It will strengthen integration between these two fields to generate evidence which is more relevant to the challenges in severely resource-constrained environments.”

Operating primarily in Malawi, evidence will be generated with input from collaborators across the Southern and East Africa region. There is also interest in expanding evidence generation on disease elimination to West Africa, with activities planned to scope out research synergies and priorities in the region.

Improve health

Simon Bland, CEO of GLIDE, said: “Our goal is to improve health outcomes and access to quality healthcare among the most vulnerable in Southern and East Africa, with the outcome of accelerating disease elimination in those regions.

“TLab strengthens the initiative by developing high quality research, making more effective resource allocation decisions and supporting policy environments for the productive use of research.”

The Thanzi Labwino project is part of the broader Thanzi Programme which is led by the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York, in collaboration with partners in Malawi, Uganda and the UK.