Trachoma causes blindness but can be treated, and one charity brings such cures to poor areas, writes MICHAEL McHALE.
THE EYELIDS turn inwards. They make contact with the eyeball, scratching the cornea and leading to excruciating pain and scarring. Usually there is only one outcome: blindness.
These are the effects of trachoma, an infectious disease that, according to figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO), affects about 84 million people worldwide. Eight million become visually impaired as a result, causing 3 per cent of the world’s blindness. Yet it is preventable.
The disease is most prevalent in developing countries that have difficulties with water supply, overcrowding and large numbers of flies, thereby triggering infection.
It is spread from person to person, often from child to child or from child to mother. A disease of poverty, it was only eradicated in Ireland in the 1930s.
Orbis Ireland is a charity that hopes to halt the spread of trachoma in two of the largest regions in Ethiopia – Gamo and Gofa – which combined have a population of two million. Of this population, 40 per cent are infected with the disease while 70,000 have already been made blind by it.
Orbis Ireland is just one division of the Orbis International charity which was set up by volunteers in 2001. However, the Irish branch wanted to focus on a project of its own so that donors here knew exactly where their funds were going.
“If we were to get involved in Ireland we didn’t want our funds going to New York or wherever, so the project we picked was this,” says Dr Maurice Cox, chairman of Orbis Ireland. “Trachoma is the scourge of the developing world.”
The charity aims to eradicate the disease among the rural communities of Ethiopia by 2012. Its work involves training local nurses in the area to give them the surgical techniques required to carry out a 10-minute operation that reverts the eyelids and can save a person from blindness. The training has led to an average of 10,000 operations being carried out every year in the regions.
But the surgical training is just one part of the overall SAFE (surgery, antibiotics, face-washing and environmental change) strategy adopted by the charity. Antibiotics that treat trachoma are distributed to the area on a regular basis, reaching 90 per cent of the population, while adequate face-washing is taught, and has been recently brought into the school curriculum there, to help prevent the spread of the disease from one person to another.
Finally, the charity aims to improve the local environment by providing improved sanitation facilities and cleaner water.
To continue its strategy into 2012, the charity aims to raise €6 million by then, including efforts to reach a target of €1 million of funds in this year alone.
To help the organisation do this, it plans to gather people to participate in the Great Ethiopian Run, an annual 10km road race held at high altitude in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, in November this year.
It is expected that more than 30,000 volunteers will take part in the race, as well as a number of professional runners. Orbis Ireland aims to raise €300,000 from its volunteers’ endeavours.
Cox describes the run as “an incredible expression of humanity” as the local population create a festival atmosphere to cheer on the participants. “I have to say, it’s a very safe, vibrant city.”
But while the charity is hopeful of the run being a success, it has been hit hard by recent cuts to foreign aid. In previous years, Orbis Ireland received €200,000 from Irish Aid, but applications for next year’s funding have been postponed, leaving the organisation with a gaping hole in its finances.
“You can understand the priorities here but this really is affecting the poorest of the poor,” says Cox.
The work of Orbis Ireland is part of the Alliance for the Global Elimination of Blinding Trachoma by the year 2020 (GET 2020) which, according to Cox, sets out a realistic objective to permanently eradicate the disease in 11 years’ time.
Orbis International also focuses on dealing with preventable blindness in developing countries, where 90 per cent of blind people in the world live. Other diseases the organisation aims to treat include cataracts and glaucoma.
In the past 26 years about 6.8 million people have had their sight saved or restored as a result of Orbis International’s work.
But funding remains a difficult issue. In a 2007 meeting of the GET 2020 Alliance it was concluded that there was a reduction on previous years in the number of surgeries on trachoma patients taking place, and that this was a result of a lack of funding for the operations.
As future Government aid remains in doubt, Orbis Ireland has to increasingly rely on personal and business donations, which, at present, include the supply by pharmaceutical company Pfizer of the antibiotic azithromycin, which is distributed by the charity to Ethiopians in three doses spanning three years.
According to Cox, the retail worth of all the antibiotics donated would amount to €57.5 million.
In the meantime, Orbis Ireland hopes that its volunteers participating in the Great Ethiopian Run this November will do enough to allow the treatment of trachoma patients in Gamo and Gofa to continue.