On World NTD Day in January, MDP and Merck* co-hosted an event marking an extraordinary milestone: 5 Billion Mectizan Treatments Donated…and Counting. The event, held in Haarlem, The Netherlands at the MSD Mectizan manufacturing facility, launched a year-long campaign to recognize the donation of Mectizan and its remarkable impact toward eliminating river blindness and lymphatic filariasis.
The event was intentionally held on World NTD Day. The donation of Mectizan catalyzed pharmaceutical donations for NTDs. There are now 20 drug donations available for 15 NTDs. MDP and Merck were also delighted that the event coincided with Niger’s announcement that the country was verified by WHO for eliminating transmission of river blindness—the first country in Africa to achieve this incredible goal.
In 1987, Merck announced the donation of Mectizan® (ivermectin) “as much as needed and as long as needed” for the treatment of onchocerciasis (river blindness) worldwide. Today, transmission of river blindness is being eliminated worldwide.
The donation was expanded in 1998 to be co-administered with GSK’s donation of albendazole for the elimination of lymphatic filariasis (LF) in African countries and Yemen where the two diseases are co-endemic. In 2017 following the adoption of WHO’s recommendation for triple therapy (ivermectin + diethylcarbamazine + albendazole, known as IDA), Merck decided to donate up to 100 million Mectizan treatments annually through 2025 to accelerate the elimination of LF in countries where onchocerciasis in not endemic across the globe.
The impact has been dramatic. To date, the donation of Mectizan contributed to the elimination of transmission of onchocerciasis in Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Niger. Severe skin itching, visual impairment, and blindness are a thing of the past. Lymphatic filariasis has been eliminated with Mectizan and albendazole as a public health problem in Malawi, Togo, and Yemen. LF was also eliminated in Timor-Leste thanks to the donations of Mectizan, albendazole, and DEC for the implementation of IDA.
More than 340 million people no longer need treatment in subnational regions of several African countries where disease transmission is suspected to be eliminated.
*Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, New Jersey, USA, is known as MSD outside the United States and Canada.