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WHO Declares Ecuador Free of Onchocerciasis

Ecuador has become the second country in the world to eliminate this disease after Colombia

14.10.2014
Photo: One quarter milimetre larva (microfilarial) of Onchocerca obtained from a skin biopsy. Image: Jordi Mas

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. Jordi Mas, member of the research group of Jordi Vila, Director of the Antibiotic Resistance Initiative the Department of Clinical Microbiology in the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona, takes part of this international team.

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. 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 Ecuador's Ministry of Health requested WHO to formally verify elimination.

Besides Colombia and Ecuador, large-scale treatment of at-risk populations has achieved to stop transmission in Mexico and Guatemala.