Fighting Disease:  Cameroon

Controlling River Blindness

River blindness is a parasitic disease transmitted by the bite of small black flies that breed in rapidly flowing streams and rivers. The disease causes severe itching, eye damage, and often blindness but is preventable through health education and distribution of the medicine Mectizan®. Learn more about the Carter Center's campaign to eliminate river blindness from the Americas and to control it in Africa >

Onchocerciasis, or river blindness, is widespread in Cameroon. In the early 1990s, the River Blindness Foundation began assisting Cameroon's Ministry of Health to distribute Mectizan® (ivermectin, donated by Merck) in North province. The Carter Center assumed the River Blindness Foundation in 1996. In addition, the Carter Center River Blindness Program in partnership with the Lions Clubs International Foundation began working in the West province of Cameroon in 1996. Other nongovernmental organizations are active in the fight against onchocerciasis in Cameroon along with the African Program for Onchocerciasis Control.

In 2010, Carter Center-assisted areas in Cameroon received 1,823,700 treatments for river blindness, including 1,385,562 treatments in West region and 438,138 treatments in North region.

Since 2004, Mectizan distribution has been conducted by community-directed distributors (CDDs) using the kinship strategy, which calls for training more CDDs to serve their kinship group rather than the larger community. Training is followed by close supervision: CDDs are supervised by community-selected supervisors in their respective communities, and health workers at front-line health units are supervised by the regional and Carter Center teams.

In 2010, the program trained a total of 23,523 CDDs in the West and North regions; of these, 13,695 were newly trained.

The Carter Center closed its office in Cameroon in August 2012.

Read the Real Lives, Real Change feature: Making Inventions Out of Necessity to Fight River Blindness >

Read the blog: Fighting River Blindness in Cameroon: Navigating Mud, Biting Flies, and Torrential Rains >

Learn more about the Center's work to fight river blindness in Cameroon (in search result format) >