ABSTRACT
Why did the addition of the word ‘neglected’ and a new grouping of diseases have such a tremendous effect in global health? Why was the word ‘tropical’ retained as a descriptor for 20 diseases largely impacting poor communities? While the last chapter provided a recent policy history of NTDs, this chapter aims to address questions about the transition of the tropical disease category, exploring the origins of ‘tropical’ and ‘neglected’ categories and asking how categorisation has shaped the definition of the policy problem and solution for NTDs. While NTDs could be taken as a single unit and a categorisation in itself, ‘tropical’ and ‘neglected’ form distinct categories on their own. There is value in looking at all three categories: NTDs, the tropical, and the neglected as discrete units.
