Trachoma
Six million people have been blinded by the eye infection trachoma and a staggering 146 million are facing blindness if they do not have access to preventative medication.
Re–infection can occur many times, causing the eye lid to turn under, scarring the cornea with every painful blink, until blindness is inevitable.
What causes Trachoma?
A 4 month old Malawian boy with Trachoma reaches CBM's specialists. © CBM.
Trachoma is an eye infection that strikes children and families who live in dusty regions and quickly spreads from person to person, attacking entire communities. It is easily transmitted when contact is made with eye, nose or throat discharges.
Trachoma thrives in environments where basic hygiene routines are lacking, often due to the scarcity of water.
How can Trachoma be prevented?
CBM has implemented the SAFE Programme to stop the spread of trachoma by equipping high-risk communities to take action against this preventable form of blindness at the family and community level.
SAFE represents the four key actions required to combat trachoma:
Surgery
Antibiotics
Face Washing
Environmental Improvement
Surgery is the last resort for a person with advanced trachoma. For people in the most advanced stages of the infection, surgery to rotate the eyelid back to its original position is the only way to escape blindness. At least 10.6 million adults in the world are in urgent need of surgery.
Antibiotics effectively clear up active cases of trachoma. Tetracycline eye ointment used twice a day for six weeks, gets rid of the infection. However, if a child is exposed to siblings or friends with trachoma, he or she can be re-infected in just a few months. For this reason, it is more effective to treat a whole family than to treat an individual child. And it is even more effective to treat an entire village.
Face Washing is one of the most effective ways to prevent the trachoma infection. While this sounds simple, in the dry regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America, water is in short supply and face washing is not simply a matter of turning on the tap. It can take hours for a mother to retrieve water to wash her children’s faces, and many are not aware of the link between face-washing and trachoma prevention. Education is essential.
Environmental Improvement, for both families and communities, is critical in the fight against trachoma. This means teaching families to build latrines, collect rainwater, carefully dispose of rubbish, and ventilate sleeping areas. At the community level it means improving the water supply, village sanitation, housing, and encouraging education.