Fighting Disease:  The Republic of Sudan and The Republic of South Sudan

Fighting 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 >

For additional information and updates on the program activities below, read the latest issue of Eye of the Eagle >

After the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement ended the decades-old civil war and created the semiautonomous government of South Sudan, The Carter Center River Blindness Program ceased its activities in South Sudan.  However, Carter Center Guinea worm eradication and trachoma elimination efforts continued in partnership with the government of South Sudan.

The Center works with the Republic of Sudan, other nongovernmental organizations, and the African Program for Onchocerciasis Control. Together, under the umbrella organization of the National Onchocerciasis Task Force, they establish community-based treatment programs, which raise awareness in villages and enable the distribution of Mectizan® (ivermectin, donated by Merck). The Carter Center's River Blindness Program, with support from the Lions Clubs International Foundation, works in three foci in Sudan: Abu Hamad (River Nile state), Radom (South Darfur state), and Galabat (Gedarif state).

In December 2006, the Republic of Sudan launched a new onchocerciasis elimination policy with an initial concentration on the isolated desert focus of Abu Hamad in River Nile state. At the invitation of the government of Sudan, Lions-Carter Center SightFirst Initiative expanded technical and financial assistance to support this new elimination effort. The strategy was based on increasing Mectizan® distribution (donated by Merck) from annually to every six months. Today, success in Abu Hamad is demonstrating that elimination of river blindness disease in parts of Africa is possible.

A complication in the Abu Hamad elimination effort was flooding of endemic communities that resulted from the closure of the new Merowe Dam in 2008. This displaced thousands of (potentially infected) Abu Hamad residents, many to a new state (Northern state) that up until then had not been part of the national onchocerciasis program. The Center's River Blindness Program has assisted the Ministry of Health to find and treat displaced people as part of the elimination effort. In 2009 and 2010, the program made progress in tracking the displaced, and more than 10,000 people received treatment in their new communities. In May 2012, Sudan announced the end of river blindness transmission in Abu Hamad.  Read the statement > 

Like each of the Center's other health programs in Africa, the River Blindness Program is not without obstacles. Transportation of Mectizan is difficult or even impossible to some of the areas made remote by fighting and poor road conditions, and project workers' lives often are in danger.

In 2010, a total of 329,845 treatments were delivered in Sudan to fight river blindness. Also in 2010, the program trained 1,349 new community-directed distributors (CDDs) and retrained 1,949 CDDs in Abu Hamad, Galabat, and Radom. Health education covered all 319 communities in the Abu Hamad, Galabat, and Radom foci.

Community involvement and the work of community members have made all the difference; people work as community-directed distributors in their own villages, fighting the disease at home.

Watch the video journal: Pioneering Approach Brings River Blindness to Brink of Elimination in Sudanese Community >

Learn more about the Carter Center's River Blindness Program in Sudan (in search result format) >