UB collaborates in WHOʼs international team that has declared Ecuador free of onchocerciasis
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization (WHO), has declared Ecuador free of onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness. Ecuador has become the second country in the world after Colombia to achieve elimination of onchocerciasis, a disease that affects 37 million people in the world.
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization (WHO), has declared Ecuador free of onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness. Ecuador has become the second country in the world after Colombia to achieve elimination of onchocerciasis, a disease that affects 37 million people in the world.
This declaration is based on the favourable report developed by the International Verification Team for the Elimination of Onchocerciasis of WHO that visited the former endemic focus of the disease in the Esmeraldas Province in May 2014.
“Thanks to the work developed by this team, it has been confirmed that Ecuador has successfully achieved elimination of onchocerciasis with a model that can be used to eliminate the disease in other countries”, points out Jordi Mas, researcher at the Microbiology Unit of the University of Barcelona (UB) and the Parasitology Section of the Microbiology Laboratory at Hospital Clínic in Barcelona.
Tropical parasitic disease
Onchocerciasis or river blindness is one of the seventeen diseases included in the group of neglected tropical diseases of WHO. Onchocerciasis is an eye and skin disease. Infected people may show symptoms such as severe itching and various skin lesions. In most cases, nodules develop under the skin. It is caused by the filarial worm Onchocerca volvulus and transmitted by repeated bites of infected blackflies of the genus Simulium, which breed in fast-flowing rivers and streams.
Onchocerciasis occurs in Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, South America and the Arabian Peninsula. Around 37 million people are infected in the world and it is estimated that about half million people are blind due to the disease.
In Ecuador, onchocerciasis was eliminated by administering ivermectin to infected people twice a year from 1990 to 2009. At this point, it was confirmed the elimination of cases and the interruption of transmission. Then, it followed a three-year epidemiological surveillance period, which ended in 2012 and showed that transmission remained interrupted.
Based on these results, the Steering Committee of the Onchocerciasis Elimination Program for the Americas (OEPA) in consultation with Ecuadorʼs Ministry of Health requested WHO to formally verify elimination.
OEPA was set up in 1992 with the objective of eliminating ocular morbidity and transmission throughout the Americas by 2012 with sustained large-scale treatment of at-risk populations with ivermectin. All 13 foci in the region achieved coverage of more than 85% in 2006, and transmission was interrupted in 10 out 13 by the end of 2011.
Besides Colombia and Ecuador, large-scale treatment of at-risk populations has achieved to stop transmission in Mexico and Guatemala.
For further information, please read WHO press release.