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A trachoma task force, antibiotics, thousands of health workers, and eye care units have helped The Gambia control one of the most infectious diseases.
The government of The Gambia recently announced that the country had eliminated trachoma, a highly contagious eye disease, after years of hard work by health workers, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and communities. In The Gambia, the disease accounted for 17% of the reported blindness in a national survey in 1986. The prevalence of trachoma has dropped from 0.1% to 0.02% in the last 10 years. Current estimates show a prevalence of less than 0.2% in adults aged over 15 years. This is about one case per 1,000 people. Trachoma has been described as the most infectious cause of blindness in the world, responsible for 1.4% of blindness. It is one of the 20 neglected tropical diseases that plague over a billion of the world’s poorest people.