- How we Help
- Where we work
- Asia
- Caribbean
- East Africa
- Southern Africa
- West Africa
- Burkina Faso
- Benin
- Liberia
- Mali
- Nigeria
- Senegal
- Sierra Leone
- The Gambia
- Togo
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- Protected in Guinea
- Guinea Bissau
- Guinea Conakry
- Our Successes
- Achievements
- Last years highlights
- People we've helped
- Eliminating the problem
- Demonstrating success
- Village Vision
- Sorufa's Story
- Mohammad's New Business
- Protecting a Child's Future
- Restoring Sight in Bangladesh
- Top of the Class
- Africa without river blindness
- Hakim's Story
- Reaching more children
- Abdoulie's Story
- Talking to Angeline Akai
- Mama's Independance
- Lasoi's Story
- Saving Sight
- Kaduna State
- Caught in Time
- Learn More
Community Mectizan® distributor Mamu with village children in Guinea Moyenne © Laura Crow / Sightsavers
Controlling river blindness
Sightsavers is combating river blindness by supporting distribution of the treatment Mectizan®.
Ways to break the cycle of infection:
- reduce the number of flies by spraying affected areas with insecticide - an expensive and short-term solution.
- slow the pace of fast-flowing rivers, making them unattractive as breeding grounds - expensive and not always practical.
- reduce exposure to flies by using protective garments - impractical because of the temperatures in affected countries.
- kill the adult worms by removing the worm 'nodules' - difficult because infected villages are often very remote and poor, making accessible surgery difficult.
- provide an annual dose of the treatment Mectizan® to the affected communities.
Using Mectizan®
An annual treatment of Mectizan® makes the adult female worm that causes river blindness temporarily infertile and kills the larvae which live in the skin and eyes.
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 whole communities - 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.
Our work with river blindness
Sightsavers relies upon community-based volunteers to ensure that work to combat river blindness reaches the people in most need.
• Sightsavers is part of a mass distribution programme, involving the World Bank, the private sector, voluntary organisations and local communities.
• our local partners train community volunteers to distribute the treatment annually in areas where people need it. The cost of doing this for a whole community works out at about 8c per person, per year. Last year alone we helped distribute Mectizan® to over 24 million people.
