Abuja, 7 December 2010 -- The WHO Regional Director for Africa Dr Luis Sambo has urged governments and development partners to ensure that eliminating river blindness from Africa is a success given the laudable achievements of previous control programs.

He made this call at the 16th session of the Joint Action Forum (JAF), the governing board of the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC) which began its deliberations in Abuja, Nigeria today.

The Regional Director underscored the importance of sustained partnerships and inter-sectoral collaboration towards the attainment of the health-related Millennium Development Goals. He observed that although in the past few years, there have been an increasing number of international health initiatives for Africa, governments need to strengthen their role as leaders and key actors of development.

“Taking into account the global financial crisis, I am pleading with African governments for a more efficient management of health resources and ensure adequate allocation of domestic resources to the health sector”, he stressed.

Dr Sambo expressed gratitude to all partners and pointed out that APOC is hailed as one of the leading public health successes in Africa with proven evidence that elimination of river blindness in Africa using ivermectin is feasible. He said the programme has progressed beyond its original mandate of controlling river blindness to focus on the elimination of the disease and paid tribute to the very able leadership of Dr Uche Amazigo and her strong dedicated team for the work done.

In his address read by Health Minister Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan pledged Nigeria’s continued support to the disease control programme and called for its extension beyond the pre-set exit date of 2015, to ensure complete elimination of the disease. He urged the international community to encourage APOC to continue as there is no other viable regional body with the experience, institutional memory and exposure to coordinate the control, elimination/eradication and management of onchocerciasis.

Recalling his personal experience with river blindness, the guest speaker, General Danjuma, a philanthropist said he suffered and survived river blindness as a young military officer and has supported efforts to fight it. He pledged to donate 1 million US Dollars to APOC’s Trust Fund and called on the Nigerian government to make a donation towards bridging the $66 million funding gap towards the elimination of the disease from Africa.

In her welcome address, Dr Amazigo appealed for continuation of support for the programme adding that: “If APOC is allowed to sunset in 2015, the huge health and socio-economic gains over the past 30 years will be lost and blindness may return.”

For more information, please contact:

Technical Contact:

Dr Uche Amazigo – Amazigou [at] oncho.afro.who.int

Media Contact:

Collins Boakye-Agyemang – Boakyec [at] afro.who.int
Zainab Akiwumi – Akiwumiz [at] oncho.afro.who.int
Dr Ola Soyinka – Soyinkao [at] ng.afro.who.int