One in seven of the world’s population suffer from a neglected tropical disease. That’s more than the population of Europe. And yet, through large-scale mass drug distribution programmes in some of the poorest regions on the planet, nearly one billion people are now safer from these diseases than they were half a decade ago.

This film celebrates the 5th anniversary of a groundbreaking international coalition: Uniting to Combat Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Its aim is hugely ambitious yet highly focused: to control, eradicate or eliminate ten debilitating and potentially fatal tropical diseases by 2020. Here, we document some of the incredible progress so far.

This six-minute introductory film was shown to over 800 senior government officials and world health delegates at the World Health Organisation in Geneva in April 2017. With a revised version created for distribution on social media after the event, this brings the number of films we delivered to 15 – all of which help to share the positive impacts of this life-changing programme to a wider audience.

Humanity has eradicated one dangerous disease: smallpox. Under the right circumstances, we are on the path to achieve elimination or eradication of four others.

We were commissioned to create a series of films aimed at increasing awareness and accelerating progress towards disease elimination, particularly around neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) such as polio, lymphatic filariasis, river blindness & malaria.

By focusing on the key lessons from the successful smallpox and ongoing polio eradication campaigns, and hearing from the people at a global and national level, our films in GLIDE’s ‘Eliminating Diseases’ video series sought to  raise the profile of NTDs amongst stakeholders, funders and governmental organisations.

We’re proud to share that our film generated over 1,000 views on GLIDE’s YouTube channel, and over 150,000 combined video plays on their social media channels. In addition, page visits to the organisation’s website rose by 161%, along with a 187% increase in new users, with the most notable increase seen in visitors from target country, Cameroon, which saw a 100% rise.

As a crowning achievement, we along with Gong Communications were nominated as finalists in the 2023 Sabre Awards in the Central African category for work in raising awareness through GLIDE’s Webisodes Campaign.

On the 13th December 2017 the billionth treatment for neglected tropical diseases was celebrated across the world.

Sightsavers hosted events in Cambridge, UK and Abuja, Nigeria as well as distributing a powerful film we made on the backstory of river blindness in 7 other countries. We focussed on three characters in the film, a blind grandfather, his sighted daughter and a community drug distributor, the life-line of mass drug administrations that have been happening across the world for the past 7 years.

We provided not only the film but a live-stream between Cambridge and Abuja allowing the minister of health to talk to delegates in the UK and giving them a chance to meet the community drug distributor live on screen. We also covered the event itself to share with stakeholders, marking a truly global day in the fight against NTDs and in celebration of effective collaboration between parties across the world.