Looking to social sciences to improve the control of neglected tropical diseases

Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are a group of 17 infectious diseases with a wide range of symptoms and findings, affecting more than one billion people worldwide, mostly the poor. Over the past few years, the World Health Organization (WHO) and partners have committed to strengthening the fight against the NTDs by setting specific goals for control, elimination and eradication of the respective diseases. Mass drug administration (MDA) is an important strategy in the fight against several of the NTDs; however, in order to meet the WHO targets by 2020, high and sustained treatment coverage will be essential. Social sciences, a previously neglected aspect of NTD control programmes, could help strengthen and further develop MDA and the promotion of healthy behaviour. Lessons learned from other disease control programmes, such as the recent Ebola epidemic, could lend inspiration to the further fight against NTDs. In this review, we found only a limited number of primarily observational studies of social scientific approaches to the control of NTDs. There is a need for creative, yet robust studies to address the challenges of quantitatively measuring the effect of social sciences in a meaningful way. Qualitative studies of other global health challenges indicate that social sciences do have an important role to play, and medical, public health and social scientists will need to find ways of working together in order to successfully combat NTDs.