A lack of sustained funding means patients with sleeping sickness, for example, must endure toxic and dangerous treatments for just a chance of survival, even though a better treatment has shown some positive results in the lab, said the medical humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres, urging political leaders to do more to assure funding.

Stimulating innovation and delivering effective, affordable treatments for diseases that affect the world's poorest populations, and that fall outside the mainstream market interest, remains a tremendous challenge for DNDi and its partners given the lack of sustainable and predictable funding sources.

More than 500 million people are at risk from these three parasitic diseases.