Cuts to foreign aid by the UK government risks a rapid return of trachoma and other neglected tropical diseases in Ethiopia and Sub-Saharan Africa, according to Orbis UK.
David Bennett, director of programme support at Orbis UK, said: ‘If the UK government is serious about eliminating neglected tropical diseases including trachoma, communities cannot wait for treatment.’
The charity’s comments marked the World Health Organization’s (WHO) World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day on January 30, which aimed to achieve health equity to end the neglect of poverty-related diseases.
‘Beating trachoma is a race against time and cuts to aid threaten the efficacy of years of hard work,’ Bennett added.
He said intervention could radically change lives but, without them, livelihoods could be lost, children could miss school and communities risked being plunged into further poverty and isolation.
‘While we recognise it’s a challenging time for the UK government and budgets need to be carefully considered, we also know that 90% of the world’s vision loss is avoidable with simple, cost-effective surgeries and treatment. The UK government has historically been an important contributor to aid assistance, and we urge them to make provisions for sight-saving eye health in their forthcoming International Development Strategy,’ Bennett said.
Risk on the rise
The charity noted that for World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day in 2021, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his support in a video for the WHO’s plans to eliminate trachoma by 2030.
In the video, the Prime Minister acknowledged there was nothing inevitable about the avoidable suffering of millions affected by neglected tropical diseases.
In November, 2021, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak announced that cuts to foreign aid spending would continue until at least 2024.
The government’s annual aid budget was reduced in 2021 from 0.7% of gross national income to 0.5%, which totalled a projected figure of £11.1 billion compared to £14.5bn in 2020.
It said the 0.7% rate would return when the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasted that the government was not borrowing money for day-to-day spending and underlying debt was falling as a percentage of national income.
Orbis said cuts to UK aid assistance would leave millions at risk of avoidable blindness and the rapid return of trachoma in Ethiopia and much of Sub-Saharan Africa where 35% of the global burden of disease resides.
Continued care
Orbis said ophthalmologists, nurses and eye health workers in Ethiopia had defied the odds to treat millions of people with antibiotics to fight trachoma and surgeries, despite cuts to UK aid assistance that threatened eye care.
As part of World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day, Orbis celebrated its medical teams who have worked in Ethiopia for 23 years.
Over 12 million people have been treated with the antibiotic Azithromycin across 102 districts in Ethiopia’s South Nations, Nationalities and People’s Region and the new Southwest Region where it said the burden of trachoma remains particularly high.
Orbis highlighted that over 1.7 billion people live with neglected tropical diseases, including trachoma. Globally, it said an estimated 1.9 million people were blind or have vision impairment due to trachoma and women were most at risk of developing trachomatous trichiasis.
The charity noted women and girls were not as likely to be considered for sight saving surgery because they were less likely to be working. This means 70% of those living with trichiasis, which occurred after repeat or untreated trachoma infection, were women.
Orbis’ teams in Ethiopia have continued to work through Covid-19 restrictions but treating people face-to-face meant the length of time to treat the numbers needed to stop the spread had doubled.
Despite this, nine million doses reached communities in December alone and 16,000 surgeries were performed for trichiasis in 2021.
Dr Alemayehu Sisay, country director for Orbis Ethiopia, said: ‘This World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day, Orbis is proud to join the WHO and more than 300 other organisations coming together to combat neglected tropical diseases. We know this work is integral to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 3 around good health and wellbeing.
‘Our team has remained committed to continuing to distribute sight-saving antibiotics because we know how restoring vision changes lives and communities.’
The WHO said despite Covid-19, a total of 757 million people received treatment for neglected tropical diseases in 2020 but over one billion were affected and 1.7 billion needed preventative treatment every year.
Filling the gap
Optician asked how services provided by Sightsavers and Vision Aid Overseas (VAO) were affected by cuts. Sightsavers said it was looking towards the future of neglected tropical diseases rather than dwelling on funding cuts.
Simon Bush, director of neglected tropical diseases at Sightsavers, said: ‘There are reasons to be optimistic as several countries are on the brink of submitting their evidence for trachoma elimination to the WHO this year. But I remain very concerned for the prospects of countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone where millions of people remain at risk. Instead of saying these countries’ problems are too complex to support, donors should be saying we must support them because they’re so complex.’
Sightsavers highlighted that before funding cuts were made, gaps were still evident. It said that in 2022, 28 million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo could miss out on treatment for river blindness.
VAO said it agreed with Orbis UK’s statement that cuts threatened the efficacy of years of hard work. The charity shared an example from April, 2021, of how its work had been affected by cuts and said they were exploring other ways to take its work forward.
Nicola Chevis, CEO at VAO, said: ‘We secured funding from UKAID Direct (now FCDO) for a comprehensive eye care programme in Ghana working in consortium with two other international non-governmental organisations and the Ghana Health Service. The programme was cut before it started as part of the UK foreign aid cuts. The programme would have brought eye care services and glasses to 2.1 million people living in rural Ghana.’