Neglected Tropical Diseases (or NTDs) devastate the lives of a billion people across the world, half of them children. Yet these parasitic diseases remain mostly unknown. Our challenge was to raise awareness about seven of them. But since most people recoil when they see the symptoms, we had to approach our campaign in a radically different way.

The unique thing about this charity is that there is an end in sight. All seven NTDs can be cured – just 50p can treat and protect a child for a year. So we named the campaign END7. And we simplified the complex message in an engaging animated film. This drew people to the Facebook page where they could find out more and read progress reports on how ‘Together we can see the end’.

The campaign advocates greater government and philanthropic funding to fight NTDs. Within two weeks of launch, END7 was featured in high level meetings with the World Health Organisation, the World Bank, representatives of large pharmaceutical companies and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Together they’ve committed to a $200m increase in funding and the donation of billions more pills to treat these diseases. And the US government increased its funding for NTDs by 15% increase for 2012, while the UK government has pledged £245 million over the next five years.

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