Since April 1,Cameroon has been organizing, with the support of its partners, a national mass treatment campaign against onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness. This distribution campaign for Mectizan, a drug against this disease, will take place until July 30 in the ten regions of the country, indicates the Ministry of Public Health. It targets some 8 million Cameroonians, mainly children aged over 5 and adults, in 122 health districts. With the assistance of partner NGOs, around 28,000 community distributors have been mobilized to facilitate the distribution of drugs in all endemic communities, we learn.
“ Cameroon has been endemic to onchocerciasis for decades. This is why, following WHO guidelines, the National Program for the Control of Filariasis and Onchocerciasis decided to adopt the mass distribution strategy that has been taking place for more than 20 years. The Cameroonian populations benefit from Mectizan free of charge in order to interrupt the transmission of onchocerciasis and stop the process of transmission of the disease ,” declared Dr Théophile Mistral Mpaba Minkat, permanent secretary of the said control program, in comments reported by the daily public Cameroon tribune.
Since the 1990s, when the National Onchocerciasis Control Program was created, Cameroon has been at the forefront to limit the impact of this disease. The country has a strategic plan for the elimination of onchocerciasis with the objective of eliminating the disease by 2030. According to the Ministry of Public Health, more than 35 million tablets for approximately 12 million Cameroonians have already been provided to the country by the Mectizan Donation Program (PDM). The two institutions renewed their partnership in June 2022 in order to accelerate the elimination of onchocerciasis.
Under the agreement, the PDM commits to continuing the free and sufficient supply of Mectizan, as part of efforts to eliminate river blindness until the World Health Organization (WHO) declares Cameroon as having achieved the elimination of this disease. For its part, the Cameroonian State is committed to facilitating the entry of Mectizan into the country without costs or customs duties, and to providing the necessary resources for the implementation of programs, including the efficient distribution of drugs to people who need it, impact monitoring and post-treatment surveillance.
Classified as a neglected tropical disease (NTD), onchocerciasis is an eye and skin disease. The symptoms are caused by microfilariae which move into the subcutaneous tissues and cause violent inflammatory reactions when they die, explains the WHO. Infected people experience severe itching and skin lesions. They also sometimes have eye damage which can lead to visual impairment and irreversible blindness. In most cases nodules appear under the skin around adult worms, indicates the UN agency.
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