WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION TO HEAD NEW EXPANDED PROGRAMME TO ELIMINATE RIVER BLINDNESS FROM AFRICAN CONTINENT
Press Release
H/2886
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION TO HEAD NEW EXPANDED PROGRAMME TO ELIMINATE RIVER BLINDNESS FROM AFRICAN CONTINENT
19951206 GENEVA, 5 December (WHO) -- Building on a sustained decades-long effort that has today all but eliminated onchocerciasis (river blindness) in 11 countries of west Africa, the World Health Organization (WHO) is now set to lead an ambitious new programme which aims to control and eventually eliminate the disease as a public health hazard from the entire African continent.The new initiative, the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control, is being launched today at a conference hosted by the World Bank, the programme's leading sponsor, and is to become operational beginning in January 1996.
The programme will directly benefit more than 15 million people who are infected with onchocerciasis, in 16 participating countries: Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, Sudan, United Republic of Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire. In all, nearly 100 million people living in those countries are estimated to be at risk from the disease.
As the programme's executing agency, WHO will provide overall technical guidance and coordination, working in close cooperation with the Bank, participating governments, a consortium of bilateral donors, and non- governmental development organizations. The WHO is currently preparing a technical framework based on an intensive operational research programme in Africa.
The pharmaceuticals firm Merck & Co. will provide the drugs on which the programme's control strategy is based, free of charge.
Onchocerciasis constitutes a major public health problem in the 16 countries. It is the second leading infectious cause of blindness, and other common symptoms include severe skin diseases, chronic itching and debilitation. Onchocerciasis is commonly known as "river blindness" because of its most severe manifestation and because the blackfly that transmits the disease abounds in fertile riverine areas, which frequently remain uninhabited by people for fear of infection.
The new control programme was inspired by an earlier programme, also headed by the WHO, which began in 1974 and now covers 11 countries in west Africa. That programme has relied mainly on the application of insecticides
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through aerial spraying to destroy blackfly larvae in fast-flowing rivers, thereby breaking the cycle of transmission. The reservoir of infective parasites has died out in seven of the countries and will be virtually eliminated in the others by the year 2002.
The west African programme ranks among the largest and most successful human disease control programmes anywhere in the world and, together with the eradication of smallpox, is one of WHO's proudest achievements. The programme has reduced the number of infected people in the operations area from 1.5 million to practically nil, and prevented as many as 200,000 cases of blindness. In addition to those direct health benefits, the programme has opened enough land for resettlement and cultivation to feed an estimated 17 million people with indigenous technology and farming practices.
While building on those achievements, the new programme will employ spraying only on a very selective basis. Instead, it will promote systematic use of the drug ivermectin as the primary means for control. Although ivermectin has only limited impact on transmission, it kills the larval worms which cause blindness and other symptoms of onchocerciasis in infected persons.
The goal will be to establish sustainable, community-based ivermectin treatment activities in the 16 participating countries. The WHO current strategy calls for yearly administration of single doses of the drug to infected populations. As Merck & Co. provides the drug free of charge, the main costs of the programme will be in delivering the treatment, which will be borne by the countries concerned and by the non-governmental development organizations involved in implementation.
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