River Blindness - 20 Years Of Bringing Hope To Millions

Main Category: Eye Health / Blindness
Also Included In: Tropical Diseases
Article Date: 27 Sep 2007 - 17:00 PDT

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This October marks the 20th anniversary of the largest ongoing medical donation programme and public private partnership in history.

In October 1987, Merck & Co., Inc took the pioneering decision to donate the treatment that prevents infection from river blindness, Mectizan®, free of charge and in perpetuity.

It's estimated that as many as one million people are blind or severely visually impaired through river blindness. Another 18 million people are currently believed to be infected.

But it's a disease that can be stopped and the cycle of infection broken if Mectizan® is taken annually for at least 20 years. Sightsavers International, one of the UK's leading blindness charities, is working with its partners to ensure that river blindness is eliminated as a threat to some 14 million people in Africa. Last year, the charity was able to treat more than eleven million adults and nearly three million children in eleven African countries including Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Mali.

Transmitted through the bite of the black simulium fly which breeds in fast-flowing rivers, river blindness can lead to permanent loss of vision and result in terrible itching. The onset of blindness tends to affect people in their thirties and forties meaning that many children miss out on education because they are having to act as full-time carers to older relatives.

Getting the treatment to remote communities is a challenging task and Sightsavers helped to introduce the community-based distribution system. Using trained village volunteers, this approach has been adapted to other healthcare activities all over Africa such as Vitamin A distribution, cataract identification, bed net distribution for protection against malaria and management of other parasitic diseases.

According to Caroline Harper, Chief Executive of Sightsavers: "River blindness is a disease that could - and should - be consigned to medical history just like smallpox. Together with our local partners and the immeasurable support of Merck and other international organisations, we've come a long long way in the last 20 years and literally stopped millions from potentially going blind. But we still have to do more if we are to achieve our goal of eliminating river blindness by the year 2020."

The Neglected Tropical Diseases department of the World Health Organisation identifies some 13 neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) which are believed to affect 1 billion of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world. Together, many NTDs cause severe disability, resulting in billions of dollars of lost productivity. Onchocerciasis, or river blindness, is one of these diseases as is trachoma, another blinding condition, and Sightsavers maintains that treating such diseases is one way to help alleviate poverty in some of the world's poorest communities.

1. Roy Vagelos, former chief scientist and CEO Merck & Co., has been awarded this year's Prix Galien Humanitarian Award for his role in treating river blindness

2. Sightsavers International is a registered UK charity (number 207544) that works in more than 30 developing countries to prevent blindness, restore sight and improve life for those who will never see. http://www.sightsavers.org

3. There are 37 million blind people in the world; 75% of all blindness can be prevented or cured

4. Since 1950, Sightsavers has restored sight to 5.65 million people and treated more than 100 million more.

http://www.sightsavers.org

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