The Role of Medical Students in the Fight to Control Neglected Tropical Diseases: A View from Peru

Abstract

Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) is a term that might not ring a bell among the majority of our fellow medical students. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines NTDs through a list of 15 diseases, all of them infectious, ancient, and debilitating [1]. Despite vast consensus on which are and which are not considered NTDs, the precise inclusion criteria are as hard to define as global health [2]. Nevertheless, we believe that three basic features that characterize NTDs are high burden of disease in certain specific contexts, neglected from prevention and control—including drug development, and long-term impairment among those suffering from them. Neglect is the central idea, because not only do these diseases sicken the historically neglected populations, but they also have long been neglected from the axis of research, innovation, and production. The objective of this essay is to describe and promote training opportunities on NTDs to medical students, especially in Peru and Latin America. We will describe two medical student organizations and how they are organized to address NTDs. Finally, we will suggest three methods—curriculum, research, and information dissemination—of raising awareness of NTDs among medical students in Peru. Defining the NTDs through globally applicable and locally sensible criteria, instead of a rigid pre-specified list, could eventually improve the struggle against them. In this effort, medical students should play an important role. The Peruvian National Institute of Health, by establishing long-neglected diseases specific to Peru—such as Carrion disease due to Bartonella bacilliformis [3] and hydatidosis [4]—as national public health priorities for research, has shown the imperative of the need for a local NTD agenda [5].