The END Fund

The END Fund is a private philanthropic initiative to combat the five most common neglected tropical diseases. It continues to support Sightsavers through its partners by funding national disease control projects.

In 2015, the END Fund partnered with Sightsavers to undertake critical impact assessments to determine whether additional antibiotic treatment for blinding trachoma was required in Guinea Bissau, or verify if communities were close enough to eliminating the disease for treatment to be stopped.

The END Fund is also delivering blinding trachoma prevention antibiotics in Darfur, Sudan – an area that is chronically underdeveloped following conflict over the past five decades. This is in response to the Sightsavers-led global trachoma disease mapping, funded by UK Aid, which highlighted the significant need for intervention against trachoma in the region.

As well as trachoma, the END Fund also supports Sightsavers’ work to tackle river blindness in Côte d’Ivoire and, more recently, South Sudan. Because of continued instability in the area, South Sudan has a high burden of neglected tropical diseases including river blindness infection that can lead to severe skin disease with unrelenting itching, visual impairment and eventual blindness. Through partners, Sightsavers is working to provide preventative antibiotics.

Finally, Sightsavers works with the END Fund to deliver trachoma elimination activities in Tanzania through The Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust.