Sightsavers unveils river blindness campaign

Sightsavers has unveiled a 10-year campaign to help eliminate onchocerciasis, or river blindness, one of the world's leading causes of preventable blindness. It is now starting work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where the disease is endemic and plans to raise and invest more than £27m over the next decade to help combat the neglected tropical disease (NTD) across Africa. Since 1987 Merck & Co has donated the drug Mectizan for the treatment of river blindness, a parasitic disease transmitted by the bite of the black simulium fly. To get treatment to remote communities, Sightsavers has pioneered a community-based distribution system using trained village volunteers. It will work with partners to increase annual treatments by 30 per cent, and reach 30 million people a year, as well as training 150,000 community directed distributors annually. It also plans to support Ivory Coast and Angola in combating the disease. Simon Bush, Sightsavers director of NTDs, said: 'River blindness needlessly devastates the lives of individuals, families and whole communities. It could and should be consigned to medical history which is why we are investing in scaling up and expanding our programme of activities over the next 10 years.'