One more year, faithful to our appointment, from Probitas Foundation we have initiated a collaboration with entities with which we will work over the next two years with the commitment to improve access to health in the communities where they have been developing health projects for years.

Since we began our commitment to work with entities linked to development cooperation more than ten years ago, hundreds of projects have been carried out. As a result of this collaboration, we have established relationships of trust and mutual empathy with numerous organizations, we have created synergies and we have established alliances that have improved the health of many populations in Africa, Latin America and Asia and have also strengthened us as an organization.

The mutual knowledge developed over the years with the rest of the entities, the experience of our multidisciplinary team and the trust in the work carried out by the organizations are the bases that mark our activities for the six projects selected this year.

As we have done since 2016, at Probitas Foundation we align ourselves with the general guidelines set by the World Health Organization (WHO) and with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this regard, we are particularly committed to its goals 3 and 17: "Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages" and "Revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development".

Under Goal 3, we have decided to focus our efforts on concretely supporting the fight to end neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). NTDs are, by definition, the diseases of the most vulnerable. It is not by chance that they are called neglected. These are 20 diseases that the WHO qualifies as "neglected" because, although they affect more than 1 billion people, they are almost always those with fewer resources, abandoned by governments, research centers, cooperation agencies and society in general.

The six projects we support are framed in this context and seek to be developed in a primary health care environment, reinforcing community health and public health. The stronger a country's primary health care system, the higher the quality and effectiveness of the system and the greater its impact on health. For this reason, we value those projects with system-integrated components to combat NTDs integrated into the system, with a One Health view of diseases, that promote disease prevention and care, and bring health closer to communities for their ownership.

Through these projects, we will investigate new diagnostic methods for Chagas disease in Bolivia with the Carlos III Health Institute; we will improve the epidemiological alert system against leishmaniasis in El Salvador with Farmacéuticos Mundi; we will address an integrated approach  to neglected tropical skin diseases in  the  Democratic Republic of Congo in collaboration with The Leprosy Mission; we will strengthen the clinical and laboratory diagnosis of schistosomiasis and other NTDs in Sierra Leone together with the Mon Clinic Foundation; we will work to break the transmission cycle of echinococcosis in Peru by supporting the Prodein Association; and we will carry out community-level actions to fight Chagas in the Bolivian Chaco in collaboration with the Nor Sud Foundation.                                                                                  

We are convinced that the fight against these neglected tropical diseases represents an opportunity to transform our world and improve the lives of those most disadvantaged populations, leaving no one behind.