GPZL: New Strategy 2024-2026

The Global Partnership for Zero Leprosy (GPZL) is a coalition committed to ending leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease. GPZL convenes stakeholders, links expertise, and empowers and leverages the collective strengths of our members towards the ultimate goal of zero leprosy: zero infection and disease, zero disability, zero stigma and discrimination.

For the period 2024-2026, without losing the wider long-term vision of zero leprosy, the GPZL Leadership Team has chosen to focus primarily on objectives related to zero transmission of leprosy. It believes that this focus is warranted considering the current momentum, within WHO and at country level, towards interruption of transmission.

The headline objectives and strategies for 2024-2026 are:

a) Facilitate the implementation and scaling-up of existing and new tools to interrupt transmission, by:

• Collaborating with World Health Organization to convene international and in-country stakeholders to align on deployment and scale-up of tools to interrupt transmission; and
• Working with country governments and international and local partners to map leprosy and bring deployment of tools to interrupt transmission to scale nationally.

b) Align and accelerate research with a focus on zero transmission, by:

• Working together with Leprosy Research Initiative (LRI) and in collaboration with World Health Organization to build consensus on, and mobilize resources for, critical research to interrupt transmission; and
• In collaboration with LRI, steering researchers, investors and developers on the path towards zero transmission research and development priorities aligned with WHO NTD Road map.

c) Prioritise people and their rights in our zero leprosy efforts, by:

• Promoting a person-centred approach to leprosy services in endemic countries.