Contact Person:
Raymond Toye (202) 458-1653
e-mail: rtoye@worldbank.org WASHINGTON, December 14, 2001--The Annual Meetings of the Global Partnership to Eliminate Riverblindness announced today that US$39 million have been pledged to wipe out Onchocerciasis, or Riverblindness as the disease is commonly known, in the whole of Africa by 2010. This will be achieved in the second and final phases of the African Program for Onchocerciasis Control. The program builds on the highly successful results of the earlier West African riverblindness program : 18 million children born since the programs started face no risk of the disease; 40 million people are currently protected from it; and 25 million hectares of land have been made safe for cultivation and resettlement, enough to feed 17 million people a year. The meetings, co-hosted by the World Bank and US Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington December 10-14, also announced that the unique partnership and community distribution network set up to eradicate riverblindness will be used to attack other diseases in Africa and establish surveillance of communicable diseases. The onchocerciasis partners include representatives from some 30 African countries, pharmaceutical company Merck and other private companies, 12 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 27 donors, and the sponsoring agencies – the World Bank, World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The disease and its victims
Onchocerciasis is commonly known as riverblindness because its vector, the blackfly, breeds in fast-flowing rivers, and between 10 and 30% of its victims become blind. The disease is caused by a parasitic worm that develops in the human body and causes serious skin disease, unbearable constant itching, and eventually blindness.
The disease primarily affects African rural communities. Eighty percent of Africa's 600 million inhabitants depend on farming for their livelihoods. They live in areas that are often geographically remote and underserved in terms of infrastructure, public services, and communications. African rural communities are thus both numerically important, and economically crucial to development in their countries, but are little heard. They are also one of the materially poorest groups of people in the world. "These programs exemplify the Bank at its best – bringing together African governments, business, non-profit charities and other aid agencies, to empower the poorest most needful group in our member countries – rural communities in Africa" said World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn. The Riverblindness program's success in West Africa
The international community remained committed to the earlier Onchocerciasis Control Program [OCP, which covers Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo] since its inception and its initial push by Robert McNamara in 1974. The former World Bank President (1968 – 1981), honored by Burkina Faso's Ambassador during the Meetings, said "This is an enormously effective program – it's a health program with a real developmental outcome. It has empowered rural communities to banish this burden of disease, and thrive". The Group of Eight Industrialized Countries (G-8) in its July 2000 Okinawa summit communiqué, highlighted the onchocerciasis programs as one of the most promising developments they had funded to fight infectious and parasitic diseases. The West African program, based in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, has been funded by donor contributions of US$ 560 million over a period of 27 years, using vector control against the disease-carrying blackfly and drug-distribution via community-directed treatment, to prevent 600,000 cases of blindness. It has protected 18 million children from ever contracting the disease, and freed 25 million hectares (62 million acres – 250,000km²) of arable land for resettlement and cultivation. This land has the capacity to produce food for 17 million additional people each year, and is a major asset for the region in terms of food security as well as employment. It is also a counter-force against uncontrolled rural exodus. Fifteen percent of Burkina Faso's landmass, previously deserted, has now been almost entirely resettled, and agricultural production has grown 6% per year.
Ebrahim Samba – WHO's regional director for Africa and OCP director from 1980 to 1994 said "It proves it can be done – effective aid programs deliver lasting results. African member-states contributed in cash and kind, and donors have been steadfast in their support. This was achieved through hard work, transparency and accountability". Partners endorsed the transformation of OCP headquarters in Ouagadougou into a center for the surveillance of communicable diseases throughout the region. And the community-directed treatment network is to be retooled to combat the other common, widespread diseases using the same drug distribution principle. These diseases include Lymphatic Filariasis (Elephantiasis), Schistosomiasis (Bilharziosis) and Vitamin A deficiency. Most of the drugs needed to fight these diseases are readily available and require the same treatment regimen and infrastructure as that developed for riverblindness.
APOC - eliminating the disease by 2010 throughout Africa
The US$39 million pledged today to the new program (APOC – African Program for Onchocerciasis Control) will enable it to pursue its work in Central, Eastern and Southern Africa, to successfully eliminate riverblindness as a public health problem throughout the African continent. The program currently distributes the antidote – Mectizan (ivermectin) [Merck & Co., Inc. has repeatedly pledged to donate Mectizan in whatever quantity is needed, for as long as necessary] – to 25 million people (15 million in Nigeria alone) – via 69 projects in 67 000 communities in 14 countries. The new funds, to be complemented over coming years to reach a total of US$ 80 million, will bring the figure of people treated up to 60 million per year by 2010.
In the 19 countries covered by the new program [Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda], nearly 100 million people are at risk of contracting the disease. Of those, about 22 million are heavily infected. The drug is distributed thanks to the community-directed treatment method, which empowers local communities by enabling them to collectively select community distributors and to decide how and when Mectizan is to be distributed. The community distributor is remunerated on a voluntary basis by the community. The successful launching of the second phase of the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control and celebration of the founders, donors and partners of the Onchocerciasis Control Program, show the resolve of organizations, civil society, corporations and governments has not slackened. Their pledges will ensure that OCP's achievements are safeguarded, that they will be extended to all African communities suffering from the disease, and used to monitor and fight other communicable diseases.
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