River blindness in Ghana

Sightsavers (http://www.sightsavers.org) is a wonderful charity that works both to cure people who have reversible eye conditions and to prevent people from becoming needlessly blind. The charity also helps to equip those who are rendered irreversibly blind with the skills to live a more independent life.  Where possible, it also helps blind or visually impaired children to be included in the mainstream education system. 

In 2007, CMaD supported the Ashanti Regional Onchocerciasis control project in Ghana, to distribute a drug that guards against River blindness (Onchocerciasis). The Ashanti region has a land size of 24,390 sq km, representing about 10.2% of the land area of Ghana. It is the most densely populated region in Ghana, with a population of 4.4 million people. The region is drained by major rivers with rapids, conditions that favour the black flies responsible for the transmission of Onchocerciasis in communities living beside the rivers.

The disease is one of the major health problems in the region; it was estimated then that over 400 communities in all of the 21 districts were affected and almost a third of the entire population is at risk of infection.

Thanks to the project - supported in part by CMaD - during 2008 over 180,000 people were provided with the drug to help to prevent river blindness, an outcome that had a significant impact on the health of large parts of the community in the Ashanti region of Ghana.