GLIDE: End of Malaria and Lymphatic Filariasis in Sight for Philippines, Says Award-winning Filipino Doctor

? Dr Fe Esperanza Espino is one of five winners selected to win a Falcon Award for Disease Elimination

? She will receive up to USD200,000 and technical support from GLIDE to eliminate malaria and lymphatic filariasis

? The remaining four winners are from Ghana, Pakistan and Yemen

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Dr Fe Esperanza Espino, a doctor who has developed an innovative way to help stamp out malaria and lymphatic filariasis (LF) in the Philippines has won a Falcon Award for Disease Elimination. The five winners were announced yesterday by the Global Institute for Disease Elimination (GLIDE) during a Universal Health Coverage Day event at EXPO 2020 Dubai.

Dr Fe Esperanza Espino�s work will implement surveillance techniques to help eliminate malaria and LF in eight provinces across the Philippines where they currently co-exist: Basilan, North Cotabato, Sulu, Sultan Kudarat, Zamboanga del Sur, Camarines Sur, Oriental Mindoro and Palawan. The project will equip trained “barangay” (community) health workers with android tablets to collect a brief history and a geolocation of patients who visit rural health facilities.

Great achievements have been made in the Philippines to tackle malaria and LF to date. However, elimination of these diseases remains problematic, and over the last five years, the country has struggled to reduce their prevalence. Although the number of malaria cases nationwide has steadily decreased (now reported in only three of 81 provinces), the goal of elimination has been pushed back to 2030. The main objective of Dr Espino’s project is for the surveillance tool to provide information that will be crucial for the endgame of malaria and LF.

Dr Espino beat 220 applicants across 44 countries to become the first Filipino winner of the Falcon Awards. She is currently a Medical Specialist in the Department of Health at The Research Institute for Tropical Medicine in Philippines, where she has developed numerous interventions that have been used by Philippine’s National Malaria Program.

Commenting on her selection, Dr Espino, said: “I am delighted to have been selected as a winner of the Falcon Awards. Great achievements have been made towards the 2030 goal of the elimination of malaria and lymphatic filariasis. Through our new partnership with GLIDE, we will hopefully show how integrated surveillance, which uses sensitive information, can help national programmes accelerate elimination of these diseases, given the shared origin of their transmission.”

Launched in April this year by GLIDE, the Falcon Awards aim to discover and implement innovative approaches to disease elimination which focus on eliminating one or more of GLIDE’s four focus diseases: malaria, polio, lymphatic filariasis and river blindness.

The winners were selected by a jury of global health experts including Professor Maha Taysir Barakat, Board Chair of the RBM Partnership to End Malaria; Dr Sarthak Das, Chief Executive Officer of the Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance; Dr Tunji Funsho, Chair of Rotary’s National PolioPlus Committee; and Dr Katey Owen, Director of Neglected Tropical Diseases at The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Simon Bland, Chief Executive Officer of GLIDE, said: “Innovation is vital if we want to eliminate ancient diseases of poverty. The quality of applications we received from individuals and organisations based in disease-endemic countries, is testament to the will to consign these diseases to the history books. We just need to act on it. We are immensely grateful to our jury, who took time out of their demanding day jobs to select five winners from our 10 talented finalists. Above all, we look forward to working with the winners over the coming year, bringing their innovative disease elimination strategies to life.”

For more information on The Falcon Awards for Disease Elimination and the winners, please visit: https://glideae.org/awards

For photos of the winners, please click here.

[ENDS]

About GLIDE

GLIDE is a new global health institute, based in Abu Dhabi, focused on accelerating the elimination of four preventable diseases of poverty: currently malaria, polio, lymphatic filariasis, and river blindness, by 2030 and beyond.

Founded in 2019 as the result of a collaboration between His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GLIDE identifies the latest scientific, cultural, and global health knowledge and puts it into action with its partners through programmes, funding, and skills development to support local health care systems and advance global thinking.

For more information, please visit: https://glideae.org/

About the Falcon Awards for Disease Elimination

Launched in April 2021 by GLIDE, the Falcon Awards for Disease Elimination aim to advance the elimination of one or more of GLIDE’s four focus diseases: malaria, polio, lymphatic filariasis, and river blindness.

The Awards invited submissions from organisations in disease-endemic countries whose proposals address cross-border, cross-disease, cross-programme, or cross-sector approaches to disease elimination.

Five winners are selected to receive a grant of up to USD200,000 to implement their proposals, along with technical and advocacy support from GLIDE.

For more information, please visit: https://glideae.org/falcon-awards/

Contacts

For more information or for interviews with the winners, please contact:

Sara Viglione

Gong Communications

E: GLIDE@gongcommunications.com
T: +44 7794 988752