ESPEN is a flagship project of the WHO Regional Office for Africa, established in 2016 to address NTDs amenable to preventive chemotherapy (PC-NTDs) as a public-private partnership comprising Member States, WHO, donors, implementing nongovernmental development agencies, research institutions and pharmaceutical companies donating NTD medicines. Over the past nine years, ESPEN has engaged in extensive collaboration with partners as a collective venture to mobilize political, technical and financial resources to achieve its mission to reduce the burden of disease in Africa through the elimination of PC-NTDs. These NTDs are lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, soil-transmitted helminthiases, schistosomiasis, taeniasis and trachoma. Hosted at the WHO Regional Office for Africa, ESPEN works with ministries of health and NTD stakeholders not just in the WHO African Region but also in Djibouti, Egypt, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen, working in collaboration with the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region.
This 2023 annual report presents ESPEN’s progress and performance in the WHO African Region. It covers key activities and achievements of the partnership in 2023, highlighting the progress made towards elimination of PC-NTDs, strengthening of health systems for NTDs and leveraging of access to NTD data for decision-making, along with progress by the Mwele Malecela Mentorship Programme for empowering women in the fight against NTDs. The report also provides a financial overview of ESPEN’s resource mobilization and expenditure, as well as the challenges faced and recommendations for improving ESPEN’s effectiveness and impact. The report concludes with looking ahead to the planned actions and priorities for ESPEN in 2024 and 2025.