The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) has extended its financial support to the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) with additional funding. Norad awarded an extra EUR 330,000 (NOK 3,000,000) to DNDi’s programme for sleeping sickness (or human African trypanosomiasis, HAT).
Norad and DNDi began working together in 2013, when Norad awarded DNDi NOK 15 million (EUR 1.85 million) dedicated to the development of new treatments for HAT, as well as to strengthen local capacities through the HAT Platform. Initially, the programme was set to run over a period of three years, from 2013-2015, and this has since been extended through to Q2 2017.
In particular, Norad will help finance DNDi’s fexinidazole clinical study that tests a new oral compound (new chemical entity) to treat both stage 1 and stage 2 of sleeping sickness, bringing potentially a significant change to the management of the disease, both for patients and for health workers. The HAT platform is fully involved in a number of clinical studies taking place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and through them, reinforces the existing local capacities.
