Philanthropy and the last mile of disease eradication
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Description
Ellen Agler is CEO of the End Fund, a philanthropy-backed initiative working to wipe out neglected tropical diseases. She joins the Impact Room to talk progress, pooled giving, and the decolonisation of global health.  Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) affect more than 1.7bn of the world’s poorest people, blighting communities from Africa to the Americas. These diseases blind, maim and disfigure their victims, keeping children out of school, adults out of work, and further entrenching families in poverty. Yet most are preventable or treatable. Founded in 2012, the End Fund is a philanthropic initiative dedicated to ending five of the most common NTDs. A pooled fund, it invests money in support of treatment and surgeries, as well as to train health workers, educate communities and fast-track progress towards disease elimination goals. Ellen Agler is the End fund's founding CEO. She's a TED speaker, a published author, and she serves on the World Economic Forum's Global Health Security Advisory Board. In 2019. Ellen was named by Fortune magazine as one of the world's 50 greatest leaders. In this wide-ranging conversation, Ellen looks back at a decade of the End Fund’s work, and opens up about the challenges involved in last-mile disease eradication – especially during a global pandemic.  This episode of the Impact Room was presented by Maysa Jalbout and brought to you by Philanthropy Age. Find us on social media @PhilanthropyAge.
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