River Blindness

Background

Riverblindness also known as onchocerciasis is a major parasitic disease transmitted to humans through the bite of a small blackfly that breeds along the banks of fast-flowing rivers. Persons acquire the disease during their regular trips to infested rivers for their routine daily activities. Once inside the body, the parasites cause intense severe itching, gradual visual impairment and eventually permanent blindness. In addition to the serious health consequences, the economic and social consequences of riverblindness are devastating. The unbearable itching and the blindness significantly reduce the infected individuals’ ability to manage their own well-being and undermine the emotional and economic health of their household, their community and their nation. Children who are not yet affected by the disease inevitably become caregivers and laborers in their families, thus unfortunately derailing their own education and ensuring their doom to illiteracy, blindness and poverty. Riverblindness is endemic in 30 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, 6 Latin American countries and Yemen.

Ivermectin, manufactured by Merck under the trade name Mectizan®, is the only drug available for treating onchocerciasis without severe side effects. Merck provides Mectizan free of charge to those who will sponsor a program for delivering the medicine to endemic areas and will continue to do so as long as needed to bring this disease under control worldwide. The drug is highly effective, but it must be taken once a year for 10 to 15 years by every member of the community, with the exception of young children and pregnant women, in order to break the cycle of transmission. The most effective method for delivering this medicine to the people who need it, most of who live in very remote villages, is through community-directed treatment programs (CDTI).

The United Front Against Riverblindness (UFAR), is a relatively new US-based, nonprofit and tax-exempt organization whose mission is to support, in partnership with the WHO, the African Program for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC), the national government and community workers, efforts to control and eradicate riverblindness in the Kasongo region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Located near the source of the mighty Congo River in the South-East part of DRC, the Kasongo region is home to 914,155 people, 40 to 60% of who are already affected by riverblindness. No Mectizan treatment program exists there currently, but plans are in place to launch the first CDTI program in April 2007. In preparation for this launch, Daniel Shungu, UFAR’s founder and executive director has made several trips to the Kasongo region. Firstly, an exploratory trip was made in August 2004 to Kasongo with the primary goal of establishing contact and sensitizing and educating community leaders to the real problem of riverblindness. During the follow-up trip in October 2006, about 40 rural health facility personnel (nurses & doctors) were trained in the CDTI strategy. During the most recent trip in February 2007, we monitored the training of 2,104 community distributors by the group of nurses and doctors trained during our second trip. These community workers, under supervision by the rural medical staff, will be fully responsible for ensuring the distribution of Mectizan in 2007 to the first 200,000 people out of a population of nearly 1 million people in the Kasongo project. It should be pointed out that the Kasongo project is only one of 23 such projects being implemented throughout the DRC to control and eliminate riverblindness as a public health and socioeconomic problem in this country.

Proposed Involvement of Rotary International District 7510

Establish a strong relationship with one or more clubs of District 9150 in Kinshasa (DRC) and define one or two important projects on which we can collaborate. A Volunteer Service Grant Application from The Rotary Foundation is being completed for a field trip to Kinshasa and Kasongo between members of District 7510 and District 9150, in June or July 2007.
Potential projects for collaboration include (1) supporting the expansion of the CDTI program for riverblindness control in the Kasongo region, and (2) providing safe, clean water to inhabitants of Kasongo and surrounding communities.
Define and implement fundraising strategies to support these projects
Commit to making annual field trips by at least two members of the clubs for close monitoring and evaluation of the progress of the project(s).

For more information on riverblindness and UFAR, please visit: www.riverblindness.org.

The involvement of Rotarians in the fight against riverblindness has a precedent. Since 1998, the Rotary Club of Bonds Meadow (Westminster, MD), in collaboration with a local club in Tanzania and the Interchurch Medical Assistance, Inc. one of 12 official members of international NGDO group for riverblindness control, have been supporting one of several CDTI projects in Tanzania.