Increasing levels of preventable blindness

NAIROBI, Oct. 10, 2003 (IRIN) — Extremely poor levels of hygiene in Sudan, coupled with a lack of health care facilities, medicines and trained personnel, are contributing to widespread preventable blindness.

All the leading causes of preventable blindness, such as trachoma, river blindness, and cataracts co-exist in Sudan, Dr Serge Resnikoff, Coordinator of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Prevention of Blindness and Deafness programme, told IRIN.

An estimated 3.5 million people in Sudan have trachoma, he said, which is caused by a bacteria that spreads from a person’s eye or nose discharges through the common housefly or human contact. A chronic eye infection results, scarring the eyelids and causing damage to the eyeball – requiring surgery – leading to blindness if left untreated.

In Kiech Kuon, Upper Nile, over 80 percent of children under nine have trachoma in its early stages, while more than 45 percent of people over 15 have an advanced stage, according to UNICEF. The NGO, Christian Mission Aid, reports that eye diseases are so common in Upper Nile that many families consider them “a normal part of their lives”.

Six other places surveyed in southern Sudan revealed infections rates among young children of between 50 and 77 percent.

In the Sudanese context, “constant reinfections” that resulted from poor hygiene were often the cause of complications leading to blindness, said Resnikoff. “The best way of prevention is to improve hygiene, through face washing and fewer flies.”

River blindness, spread by the blackfly despositing worms into the human body, has caused 10,000 people to lose their sight, according to the US-based Carter Centre. It estimates that about 2 million Sudanese are at risk from the disease, 1.5 million of whom are in southern Sudan.