ASTMH: New Evidence that Mass Treatment with Ivermectin Has Halted Spread of River Blindness in Two Nigerian States; Separate Study Shows Drug’s Potential to Interrupt West Nile Virus Transmission in U.S.

New data indicate that mass treatment with ivermectin—a drug that was a workhorse of tropical medicine long before it emerged as a controversial COVID-19 treatment—has eliminated river blindness transmission in two states in Nigeria, the first Nigerian states to achieve this distinction in a country that has the world’s highest burden of the disease.