Left to right: Dr. Sundeep Chaitanya, director of research and innovation, prize winner Joseph Pryce, and Darren Schaupp, vice president of programs

On Thursday, September 19, 2019, American Leprosy Missions announced the first winners of the $25,000 NTD Innovation Prize at the 10th NTD NGO Network (NNN) Annual Conference in Liverpool, U.K. The Prize was awarded to Dr. Tito Trésor Melachio and Mr. Joseph Pryce for their project, "Exploring the viability of excreta sampling for monitoring Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT)." This project will develop new tools for tracking the spread of human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), or “sleeping sickness,” as the disease approaches eradication.

Dr. Melachio is a medical entomologist based at the Centre for Research in Infectious Diseases (CRID) in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Mr. Pryce is from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Read more about their project and other 2019 finalist proposals below.

2019 NTD Innovation Prize Judges Panel: Dr. David Addiss, Dr. Julie Jacobson, Dr. Annamma John, Dr. Stephen Mwatha, Rajni Kant Singh