In this “End the Neglect” blog post, Alanna Shaikh, a writer for U.N. Dispatch, writes that while “[a]t first glance, the new focus on cardiovascular and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) looks like trouble for the funding for things like neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) … that conflict is mostly superficial. NCDs and NTDs have much more in common than their initials.”

She writes, “In a world of limited funding for global health, no matter how often we advocate to increase the whole pool, in reality funding for one disease almost always comes at the expense of another.” However, she asserts that due to commonalities between NCDs and NTDs — including where the diseases occur geographically, a lack of symptoms among some diseases, and environmental causes leading to the diseases — “there is a single approach that will help to fight both kinds of disease” (10/12).