Sustainability

All along and for several reasons, in our project, we decided to highlight the issues and the reality of canine Visceral Leishmaniasis (VL). This decision had to do with our region's specificity regarding the disease and our personal experiences with the unwanted losses of our dear pets. In our researches, we understood that the scenery of human Leishmaniases is just as concerning as the canine one. In fact, humans are a crucial part of the disease cycle that we aim to tackle. We made sure to always bring up the human Leishmaniasis reality every time we presented BioPank or the importance of prevention.

To talk about the leishmaniases first, we must know that they "constitute among the most severely neglected tropical diseases (NTDs)" and that they're also a vector-borne disease, which means that vector transmits them. 1 "Neglected diseases and vector-borne diseases are a set of infectious diseases, that primarily affect the most vulnerable populations."2 It is also known that the presence of Leishmaniasis 3 "is directly linked to poverty, but social, environmental, and climatalogic factors directly influence the disease's epidemiology."

Knowing this, it is important to understand that, when dealing with NTDs, it's not only superficial but impossible to imagine a combat plan without considering all the affected instances. NTDs are "debilitating" and prevent poor people worldwide "from escaping poverty by impacting livelihoods such as agriculture and livestock, and affecting cognitive, developmental and education outcomes." 1 These diseases are now recognized in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are a set of propositions (goals) that "provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future." 4 There are 17 of them and they are part of the 2030 agenda adopted by the United Nations in 2015.

The goal more directly related with NTDs and therefore with Leishmaniasis is goal number 3 - "Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages" more specifically "target 3.3 articulated as "the end of NTDs" by 2030, to be measured by "number of people requiring interventions against" these diseases." 1 Thus, "focusing on VL and other NTDs is necessary to achieving specific SDGs including the goal for universal healthcare coverage (UHC) by 2030" which can also be found in the target 3.8.5

Considering all this, we see how intrinsically connected are VL, as an integrating part of NTDs, and the SDGs. If we think bigger we get to understand that "a critical component in reducing the disease burden and averting fatalities is early detection and treatment. However, these remain a challenge notably in poor, remote, rural settings and areas with conflict, instability, climate change impacts, and population movements."1 All these dots that the authors connected with VL show us that NTDs have an extensive effect in several instances, individually or collectively. They often relate to the social, economic and geographic situation of the affected causing, just as physical bruises, like their symptoms and undesirable evolutions, as several vulnerabilities. Among them, we can cite: psychological ones, for pointing out social differences, livelihood ones, because the person affected hardly can work and therefore maintain their family and collectively ones, for the extended treatment costs and for a reflection of the personal difficulties on the community.

We crossed with the wonderful and impactful work of Bangert et al. that link all the SDGs with all of the NTDs, demonstrating how the superation of these diseases is aligned to the success of the goals. From it, we understood that there ain't no easy tasks, that a few people won't do the process and that it isn't a "one-way road". The fight for the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals is the very same as the one of surpassing the difficulties that surround Neglected Tropical Diseases.

So beyond relating VL only with the 3rd goal we also can and must relate it to other seven goals, as shown by Table 1 of the article we cited above - The sustainable development goals, the linkage between SDGs and NTDs and the NTDs referenced.

Another exciting thing about this paper is that they highlight that "In many ways ending NTDs exemplify the potential of public-private partnership and domestic financing." We believe that BioPank represented, on a minor scale, this potential. A team of young scientists, engaged with the community, that carried out a project applying frontier science to the prevention of an NTD with the support of public and private institutions.

Beyond the SDGs, what else did we thought?

Our choice to use synthetic biology to optimise the paratransgenesis technique was based on the underlying possibility of keeping the Leishmania vector alive. This choice came from us considering the importance of the ecological relations surrounding the sand fly and the diminishing impact that implementing our solution could cause.

"Now you know."

The February 30th marks the World Neglected Tropical Disease Day, and you can learn more about it on the official website: https://worldntdday.org/

Citations

1. https://www.e-jghs.org/DOIx.php?id=10.35500/jghs.2020.2.e3 - Wamai RG, Kahn J, McGloin J, Ziaggi G. Visceral leishmaniasis: a global overview. J Glob Health Sci. 2020 Jun;2(1):e3. https://doi.org/10.35500/jghs.2020.2.e3

2. https://www.paho.org/en/topics/neglected-tropical-and-vector-borne-diseases

3. https://www.paho.org/en/topics/leishmaniasis

4. https://sdgs.un.org/goals

5. https://www.who.int/health-topics/universal-health-coverage#tab=tab_1

6. Bangert, M., Molyneux, D.H., Lindsay, S.W. et al. The cross-cutting contribution of the end of neglected tropical diseases to the sustainable development goals. Infect Dis Poverty 6, 73 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40249-017-0288-0