"In addition to providing the facilities and figuring out what the infrastructure needs are, at the end of the day, the success of all these public health programmes depends on what we call behaviour change or shifting the culture to take up these services," he said.

"Social change is actually the hard part of it," he said. "It's the type of cultural shift that comes from what we see from religious leaders and popular social figures."

A physician can treat a body, but one needs to get into the hearts and minds of people to effect behavioural change, Mistry said.

That's why last February Bollywood superstar Abhishek Bachchan was roped in as the first official END7 campaign ambassador in India to help raise awareness of NTDs.

Like his father Amitabh Bachchan's role in the polio campaign, Abhishek Bachchan's recent trip to an interior area of Orissa, about an hour's drive from Bhubaneswar, had a "very very huge" impact on NTD treatment programme.

His being actually involved in washing the feet of women infected with elephantiasis also helped reduce the stigma and misperceptions related to this.

"Now India has done an excellent job in creating policies at the federal level and currently runs some of the largest NTD control and elimination programmes in the world, reaching some 400 million people," Mistry said.

"And we are optimistic that with the new policies and commitment - sanitation together with established programmes for deworming and elephantiasis - India can notch up another success story in controlling infectious diseases," he said.