------- Forwarded message follows ------- Copyright 1999 InterPress Service, all rights reserved. Worldwide distribution via the APC networks. *** 15-Oct-99 *** Title: HEALTH-AFRICA: Efforts to end River Blindness At Risk By Abid Aslam WASHINGTON, Oct 15 (IPS) - The World Bank's efforts to eradicate river blindness in some 30 African countries faltered this week when donors failed to come up with new funding. At stake were the the future of the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC), with projects in 19 countries, and the Onchocerciasis Control Programme (OCP), an older effort covering another 11 countries. Before this week's donor meeting in Paris, the twin programmes had been touted as models of the type of public-private cooperation needed to overcome the Third World's development challenges. The efforts had brought together governments, international institutions and pharmaceutical companies - which donated drugs for the fight against river blindness, a tropical skin disease caused by a parasitic worm, the larvae of which can migrate into the eye and cause blindness. More than a million people had the disease in the 11 countries covered by the OCP and some 100,000 had gone blind, according to the Bank. The agency said the programme had succeeded in protecting some 30 million people against infection. The two-year-old APOC programme faced a funding gap of eight million dollars through the year 2001 and if new money was not found by the end of this year, ''we will begin to cut into programmes,'' said Bruce Benton, manager of the World Bank's regional river blindness unit. The OCP, set up 25 years ago, was in peril of going unfunded for what were to be its final three years, Benton told a news conference in the French capital. Funders reduced the OCP's shortfall from 7.5 million dollars to just under six million dollars but put off any further commitments. The APOC programme was a victim of its own success, Benton said, because it had opened 57 projects in its first two years - far in excess of what had been expected. Donors, however, balked at approving 500,000 dollars needed to fund a study to evaluate the exact needs of a programme to combat elephantiasis, also caused by tiny worms and marked by a debilitating swelling of the body, usually in the limbs. The funding setback to the river blindness project came as international agencies and drug manufacturers launched a new anti- malaria effort in Africa. The World Health Organisation (WHO) this week announced a new drive to provide nearly 60 million African families with insecticide-treated bed nets over the next five years. The agency's 'Roll Back Malaria' campaign was being co-sponsored by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Public and private-sector institutions in countries where malaria was endemic also had signed on to the campaign, aimed at halving worldwide cases of the disease by 2010. An estimated 700,000 African children died last year from malaria, the victims of bouts of raging fever brought on by bites from anopheline mosquitoes. Fewer than two million African households had specially-treated bed nets, according to health experts. Recent studies, however, showed that children's chances of getting malaria were halved by sleeping under the simple devices. Bed nets by themselves were not sufficient protection because they tore easily and mosquitoes could find their way through even the smallest holes. Under the new effort, however, nets would be treated with a WHO-approved, non-toxic insecticide made from the chrysanthemum plant. The insecticide had been shown to create a chemical barrier that covered up small holes and tears, according to the health agency. Maintaining that protection would involve periodically re- treating the bed nets. A study in The Gambia, in West Africa, found that this helped to reduce by about one-fourth the number of child deaths from all causes - including not only malaria but also other diseases that took root in children weakened by earlier bouts of malarial fever. However, the nets were beyond the means of most families because they cost four dollars each. The British government pledged 70 million dollars to the new campaign in a bid to reduce the price to two dollars. The US contribution to the effort was a 15-million-dollar contract awarded by USAID to the Washington-based Academy for Educational Development to educate the public about bed nets and to develop a commercial market for them. Such efforts have been criticised by African health and community development experts as pushing market-driven solutions at the expense of alternative approaches - and as providing financing to Western development organisations without sufficient consideration for local groups already doing similar work. Officials here said, however, that the market approach was the only one that would permit governments to back out after making initial investments in a scheme that eventually would finance itself through sales. The campaign's backers also drew parallels between 'Roll Back Malaria' and the Universal Childhood Immunisation campaign launched by UNICEF in the 1980s. That campaign's goal had been to immunise 80 percent of the world's children, up from 20 percent when it was launched. Officially, the agency boasted that it had met that goal, making the effort one of this century's great public health victories and the crowning achievement of its late executive director, James Grant. Internal correspondence, however, showed that some UNICEF health experts and their counterparts in a number of Third World governments remained sceptical. They expressed doubts about the efficacy of drugs and delivery systems and in some cases questioned the accuracy of progress reports. Because vaccines sometimes were not at full potency at the time of use, in many areas the drive had succeeded in vaccinating children - but not immunising them. (END/IPS/aa/mk/99) Origin: ROMAWAS/HEALTH-AFRICA/ ---- [c] 1999, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS) All rights reserved ------- End of forwarded message ------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------