Background
The World Health Organization (WHO) has validated Gambia for having eliminated trachoma as a public health problem, making it the second country in WHO’s African Region to achieve this milestone.
Gambia’s success in eliminating trachoma is largely attributed to strong collaboration with partner organizations to implement WHO’s SAFE strategy.
Trachoma
- Trachoma is a neglected tropical eye disease. Infection mainly affects children, becoming less common with increasing age. The long-term consequences of infection develop years or even decades later. In adults, women are up to 4 times more likely than men to be affected by the blinding complications of trachoma, mainly due to their close contact with infected children.
- Despite Gambia’s success, trachoma remains endemic in 27 countries in WHO’s African Region, and 29 countries on the African continent overall
- Globally, trachoma remains a public health problem in 45 countries, with an estimated 137 million people living in areas endemic for the disease.
- Trachoma is a devastating eye disease caused by infection with the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis.
- The infection spreads from person to person through contaminated fingers, fomites and flies that have come into contact with discharge from the eyes or nose of an infected person.
- India’s Ministry of Health in 2017 announced that India became free from Trachoma—a chronic infective disease of the eye and a leading cause of infective blindness—with an overall prevalence found to be only 0.7% in the National Trachoma Survey Report (2014-17).
SAFE strategy
- Elimination programmes in endemic countries are being implemented using the WHO-recommended SAFE strategy.
