Integration of control of neglected tropical diseases into health-care systems: challenges and opportunities.

Although progress has been made in the fight against neglected tropical diseases, current financial resources and global political commitments are insufficient to reach the World Health Assembly's ambitious goals. Increased efforts are needed to expand global coverage. These efforts will involve national and international harmonisation and coordination of the activities of partnerships devoted to control or elimination of these diseases. Rational planning and integration into regular health systems is essential to scale up these interventions to achieve complete eradication of these diseases. Programmes with similar delivery strategies and interventions-such as those for onchocerciasis, lymphatic filariasis, and soil-transmitted helminthiasis-could be managed on the same platform and together. Furthermore, better-resourced programmes-such as those for malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis-could work closely with those for neglected tropical diseases to their mutual benefit and the benefit of the entire health system.

Challenges in linking health research to policy: a commentary on developing a multi-stakeholder response to orphans and vulnerable children in Ghana.

The Research and Development Division (RDD) of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has a remit to build research capacity and conduct policy relevant research. By being situated within the GHS, RDD has good access to directors and programme managers, within and beyond the Ministry of Health. This structure has been facilitating collaboration through research cycles for 20 years, from agenda setting to discussions on policy relevance.This approach has been applied to research activities within the Addressing the Balance of Burden in AIDS (ABBA) Research Programme Consortium to tackle the challenges facing HIV affected orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs). The government strategy on OVCs recommends they should be encouraged to live in their home communities rather than in institutions. We present lessons here on efforts to use research to build a response across different agencies to address the problems that communities and families face in caring for these children in their communities.This approach to building consensus on research priorities points to the value of collaboration and dialogue with multiple stakeholders as a means of fostering ownership of a research process and supporting the relevance of research to different groups. Our experience has shown that if the context within which researchers, policy makers and stakeholders work were better understood, the links between them were improved and research were communicated more effectively, then better policy making which links across different sectors may follow. At the same time, collaboration among these different stakeholders to ensure that research meets social needs, must also satisfy the requirements of scientific rigour.