Africa 
Fight against last remnants of riverblindness in West Africa

afrol News, 10 October - Riverblindness is an almost eliminated plague to humanity. In West Africa, it only exists in some few peripheral zones in Ghana, Benin, Togo, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. Capital has now been raised to eradicate the disease from its last hideouts in the region by the end of 2007.

At a conference chaired by the World Bank in Luxembourg, donors agreed to allocate U$ 13.5 million to complete the elimination of riverblindness, known as onchocerciasis, from all of West Africa, by treating the last remaining peripheral zones where the disease remains active. 

According to a World Bank statement, this financing was to go to support interventions in specific areas in Ghana, Benin, Togo, Guinea, and Sierra Leone during 2003-2007 which had hitherto been unreached by the Onchocerciasis Control Programme (OCP), headquartered in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in West Africa. It was expected that these interventions would complete the highly successful, 28-year-old aid partnership effort, definitively protecting a sub-region comprising 11 countries and 40 million people against Onchocerciasis. 

Donors also pledged approximately US$ 59 million to Phase Two (2002-2007) of the African Program for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC) which actively controls riverblindness in 19 more countries in West, Central, Southern and East Africa. 

Phase I (1996-2001) was successfully completed last year and is now treating 25 million people per year in the countries covered by APOC. The additional financing for Phase II will enable the new program to scale up to approximately 100 projects over the next five years, so as to treat more than 50 million people per year with the drug Mectizan, donated by the pharmaceutical producer, Merck & Co., Inc.

These two major commitments taken in Luxembourg will go a long way toward the elimination of riverblindness throughout the African continent. Riverblindness causes unbearable itching, severe skin disfigurement, and blindness in those infected. 

About 120 million Africans will be protected from the disease by the end of the programs. Ninety-nine percent of the world's cases of riverblindness occur in Africa. The two riverblindness programs constitute a large partnership, consisting of UN Agencies, 26 donors, private companies, 30 African countries, local rural communities and up to 40 non-governmental development organisations. 

The West African Program, known as the Onchocerciasis Control Program (OCP), has had remarkable achievements thus far. It has succeeded in eliminating the disease from all but a few areas of West Africa, thereby preventing 600,000 cases of blindness.

This has led to the opening up of 25 million hectares of arable land which could not be inhabited or cultivated due to the severity of the disease and which can now feed an additional 17 million people per annum, and sparing 18 million children, born since the Program commenced operations, from contracting riverblindness.

The Global Partnership to eliminate Riverblindness is sponsored by several agencies, including the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and the World Health Organisation (WHO). 

According to the WHO, onchocerciasis is the world's second leading infectious cause of blindness. In Africa, it "constitutes a serious obstacle to socio-economic development," leaving many fertile riverside areas uninhabited for fear of infection.

Sources: Based on UN sources and afrol archives

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