News
The Future of Combatting Neglected Tropical Diseases – Innovative Financing and Shared Global Responsibility
Prof. Achim Hoerauf, Director IMMIP and Speaker of the DNTDs, together with Dr. Carsten Köhler, University of Tübingen, co-chaired the session on "The Future of Combatting Neglected Tropical Diseases- Innovative Financing and Shared Global Responsibility", at the World Health Summit 2025 in Berlin.
About the Session:
The financing of programs to combat Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) faces significant challenges. Recent developments in the United States, particularly the dissolution of United States Agency for International Development (USAID), have had serious consequences for NTD programs worldwide.
Research into new drugs, diagnostics, and interventions has been curtailed, and clinical trials abruptly halted. Health authorities and civil society organizations in endemic countries struggle to sustain essential health programs, while donated medicines from the private sector no longer reliably reach those in need. Compounding these issues, other countries are also reducing or eliminating international cooperation and health programs, and World Health Organization (WHO) funding faces dramatic cuts. As a result, the WHO roadmap for NTDs encounters considerable obstacles, and the window of opportunity to achieve its 2030 goals is narrowing. Continue reading
New Edition of the Standard Reference “Tropical Medicine – Travel Medicine, Global Health” Published
After three years of intensive work, the fully revised new edition of the German-language standard reference Tropical Medicine – Travel Medicine, Global Health has been released. Among the editors is Prof. Dr. Achim Hoerauf, Director of the Institute of Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Parasitology at UKB. The volume provides a comprehensive overview of all relevant tropical and infectious diseases, non-infectious tropical diseases, global health, travel-medicine counseling, occupational health prevention, and migration medicine. More than 140 authors with personal field experience contribute up-to-date expertise first-hand. Its structure follows the requirements of the “Tropical Medicine” specialty training curriculum and also serves as an ideal companion for the “Travel Medicine” course. In this way, the book not only supports education and training in the German-speaking world but also strengthens UKB’s scientific reputation.
Scientific Reports
Call for Papers: Neglected tropical diseases
Submission Deadline: 23 January 2026
Link: https://www.nature.com/collections/hjfhjjahag
Sonderausgabe :
Gastredakteur Dr. Manuel Ritter
bitte folgen Sie dem Link :
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/tropicalmed/special_issues/0325221U61
Clinical Trials to Assess Effectiveness of Treatment Guidelines for Lymphedema Induced by Lymphatic Filariasis
The LeDoxy trials have published their joint study on Lymphedema management using hygiene measures and doxycycline administration. The multi-centre, multi-country clinical trial, was conducted in 5 country, Ghana, Tanzania, Mali, Sri Lanka and India. The trials were a collaborative effort between COR-NTD (TaskForce for Global Health, Atlanta, USA) and IMMIP (Institute of Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Parasitology, The German Center for Infection Research, Bonn-Cologne site, Germany). Trials in Ghana and Tanzania were funded by The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through its Neglected Tropical Diseases Program through their support of the Coalition for Operational Research on Neglected Tropical Diseases (COR-NTD) grant (AID-OAA-G-14-00008), funded those conducted in Mali, Sri Lanka and India. IMMIP’s institute director Prof. Achim Hoerauf is the co-coordinator of the TAKeOFF consortium and Dr. Ute Klarmann-Schulz the Bonn PI. Continue reading
The German Center for Infection Research in focus
The German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) has produced and released a new film about the broad spectrum of its activities. At the DZIF, over 700 researchers in 35 member institutions at seven partner sites work together on the greatest challenges of infection research for the benefit of all people. The goal is translation—the transfer of scientific knowledge from basic research to practical application. But what exactly does that mean? What diseases are the DZIF's research projects focused on?
Code for a Cure: Combating River Blindness with Data & AI
A team of experts at Capgemini, in collaboration with University Hospital Bonn and Amazon Web Services, has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model that will accelerate the speed of clinical trials aiming to establish new treatments for River Blindness, a neglected tropical disease which affects over 20 million people globally. Currently, the specialist work of clinical trials can only be carried out manually by a handful of global experts, so the winning model could save years of work and speed up the development of new treatments.Continue reading
The Search for New Treatment for River Blindness
The World Health Organization estimates that 1.15 million people have lost their vision due to river blindness, while 220 million require preventive therapy against onchocerciasis. For over 25 years, the Institute of Medical Microbiology Immunology and Parasitology, at the University Hospital Bonn and the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine, in Kumasi Ghana have been conduction clinical trials in river blindness and lymphatic filariasis... Continue reading
International travel and NTDs
The world NTD day, 30th January, is an important day as it highlights diseases that are neglected, especially since those affected live in low-income countries. In marking the world NTD day, Prof. Achim Hoerauf, Director IMMIP and Speaker DNTDS, had an interview on NTDs. In his interview, he introduced NTD, their distribution as a whole and the global burden of the disease, where more than 1 billion people are affected. Prof. Hörauf also highlighted the impact of climate change on the increase in NTDs. Listen to the whole interview here…
