World NTD Day 2022 and a new Kigali Declaration to galvanise commitment to end neglected tropical diseases.

The World Health Organization's first roadmap and the London Declaration on neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) have allowed an unprecedented expansion of interventions to control and eliminate this group of infectious diseases that primarily affects vulnerable or marginalised communities. The 2021-2030 NTD roadmap sustains a further acceleration of interventions but also introduces a broader and more ambitious agenda, calling to be accompanied by a new political declaration. Sponsored by the Government of Rwanda, the Kigali Declaration on neglected tropical diseases will be launched in 2022 to renew and reinvigorate commitments to end NTDs, also in the wake of the current setback caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting on World NTD Day 2022, a global campaign "100% Committed" will call on a broad range of stakeholders to sign the declaration and make bold financial and political commitments towards achieving the 2030 roadmap and Sustainable Development Goals' targets for NTDs.

20 years of gender mainstreaming in health: lessons and reflections for the neglected tropical diseases community.

Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) affect the poorest of the poor. NTD programmes can and should rise to the challenge of playing a part in promoting more gender equitable societies. Gender equity shapes poverty and the experience of disease in multiple ways; yet to date, there has been little attention paid to gender equity in NTD control efforts. Drawing on a synthesis of relevant literature, the tacit knowledge and experience of the authors, and discussions at a meeting on women, girls and NTDs, this analysis paper distills five key lessons from over 20 years of gender mainstreaming in health. The paper links this learning to NTDs and Mass Drug Administration (MDA). Our first lesson is that tailored gender frameworks support gender analysis within research and programming. We present a gender review framework focusing on different MDA strategies. Second, gender interplays with other axes of inequality, such as disability and geographical location; hence, intersectionality is important for inclusive and responsive NTD programmes. Third, gender, power and positionality shape who is chosen as community drug distributors (CDDs). How CDDs interact with communities and how this interface role is valued and practised needs to be better understood. Fourth, we need to unpack the gender and power dynamics at household level to assess how this impacts MDA coverage and interactions with CDDs. Finally, we need to collect and use sex disaggregated data to support the development of more equitable and sustainable NTD programmes.