Magaji Ango with a poster promoting Mectizan®

Controlling river blindness

Sightsavers is combating river blindness with the drug Mectizan®.

Ways to break the cycle of infection:

• reducing the number of flies by spraying affected areas with insecticide - an expensive and short-term solution.
• slowing fast-flowing rivers, making them unattractive as breeding grounds - expensive and not always practical.
• reducing exposure to flies by using protective garments - impractical because of the temperatures in affected countries.
• killing the adult worms by removing the worm 'nodules' - difficult because infected villages are often very remote and poor, making accessible surgery difficult.
• providing a yearly dose of the drug Mectizan® in affected areas.

Using Mectizan®

Mectizan® is an effective way to make the adult female worm temporarily infertile, killing larvae. If an uninfected black simulium fly bites an infected person who has taken the drug, it will not itself become infected or infectious.

Challenges with Mectizan®

Mectizan® is the best and most cost-effective way of tackling river blindness. But it is not without challenges:

It needs to be administered regularly and across a whole community, not a simple task in remote areas with 140 million people at risk, training staff to distribute the drug is a major challenge for Sightsavers and our partners.

Achievements

 

In 2010 we were able to protect 23 million people against river blindness but there is still a lot to do:

• 140 million people in Africa are at risk of river blindness
• 300,000 in the world have already gone blind
• Last year Sightsavers supported the 150 millionth of Mectizan® treatment in its programmes