First Global Partners' Meeting on Neglected Tropical Diseases
17 ― 18 April 2007 | Geneva
The first Global Partner's Meeting on Neglected Tropical Diseases was held in Geneva, Switzerland at WHO Headquarters from 19 to 20 April 2007.
Some 200 participants attended the meeting, including representatives of WHO Member States, United Nations agencies, the World Bank, philanthropic foundations, universities, pharmaceutical companies, international nongovernmental organizations and other institutions dedicated to contributing their time, efforts and resources to control neglected tropical diseases. This meeting declared to the world that control of theses diseases deserves high priority on the global public health agenda and still greater determination to deliver appropriate health care to the millions of poor people in need.
Samuel Eto'o the international Footballer was among the participants to advocate for Neglected Tropical Diseases Control.
Quotation from Samuel Eto’o speech, African Footballer of the Year, 2003, 2004, 2005, Cameroon
I was born in Cameroon 26 years ago. When I was a schoolboy, my teacher would tell us, as all teachers did throughout Cameroon, the story of sleeping sickness. In the 1930s, this dreadful disease devastated my country and killed men, women and children indiscriminately. As a result, villages were abandoned. At the time it was decided to mobilize all possible means to eradicate this disease. The first African school for specialized laboratory technicians opened in Ayos not far from where I lived. The huge efforts and many years of control made it possible for these various teams to reach their goal and, thus, the disease completely disappeared from Cameroon and Africa in 1962.