Brazzaville, 29 August 2007 -- WHO Regional Director Africa, Dr Luis Sambo has advised countries in the region endemic for onchocerciasis (river blindness) to establish control programmes with strong community participation using a primary health care approach as a way of ensuring sustainability.

In a report Wednesday in Brazzaville to the fifty-seventh session of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa, Dr Sambo also advised such countries to promote co-implementation of relevant interventions so as to effectively provide multiple integrated health benefits to large underserved rural population.

Other benefits of the co-implementation of programmes, he said, include the maintenance of high invermectin treatment coverage, and enhanced sustainability of control activities.

The Regional Director stated that interventions that should be co-implemented with onchocerciasis control programmes included distribution of insecticide-treated nets for malaria control, distribution of vitamin . He also stressed the need to promote and implement WHO’s new strategy for preventive integrated chemotherapy in human helminthiasis. The strategy focuses on the use of a set of low-cost or free drugs for simultaneously treating four worm-borne diseases: river blindness, elephantiasis, bilharzias and soil-transmitted helminths.

River blindness, a debilitating insect-borne disease is caused by a parasite, onchocerca volvulus , transmitted via the bite of the black fly.

In 1974, the Onchocercias Control Programme (OCP) was established in 11 oncho-endemic West African countries. It helped to eliminate river blindness as a public health threat in 10 of the target countries. OCP wound down in 2002 after achieving its goal.

However, to help combat the disease in countries not reached by OCP, the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC), covering 19 countries, was established in 1995.

APOC’s objective is to establish sustainable community-directed treatment with ivercmetin (CDTI) programmes and, where possible, eradicate the vector using environmentally-safe methods.

In 2005 , according to Dr Sambo , 40 million persons in the African region were under regular ivercmetin treatment in 117 ,000 hard-to-reach communities , thereby averting 740 ,000 disability-adjusted life years.

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