This is the VOA SpecialEnglish Development Report.
Doctors in Cameroon have found that giving the drug that fightsriver blindness more often can reduce the organisms that cause thedisease.
Eighteen-million people sufferfrom river blindness. Almost all of them are in southern Africa. Asmaller number of people in Latin America also have the disease. Themedical name for the disease is onchocerciasis(on-ko-sir-KYE-uh-sis).
It is caused by a parasitic worm organism that lives for as manyas fourteen years in humans. Each adult female worm grows to beone-half meter in length.
The females produce millions of tiny baby worms that move throughthe body. The movement of these baby worms can cause skin and eyeproblems, including blindness. Black fly insects pass the parasiteto humans.
Doctors usually give patients the drug ivermectin(eye-ver-MEK-tin) one or two times a year to kill the baby worms.However, this treatment does not kill the adult female worms, whichkeep reproducing.
Because of this, doctors have tokeep treating patients until the adult worms die of old age. Thiscan take a long time. And it is difficult to reach patients in somevillages in parts of Africa and Latin America.
However, a recent study in Cameroon has found that moretreatments of ivermectin can reduce the number of adult worms inpatients. Brian Duke of the River Blindness Foundation in Lancaster,England led the research.
The scientists studied about seven-hundred patients with thedisease for three years. Some of the patients were given ivermectinevery three months. Some of them got the medicine once a year.
The results showed that about one-third more adult worms died inthe patients who were treated with the drug every three months.Details of the study were reported in The Lancet.
Scientists say the results of the study are important. However,they believe more research is needed to test if ivermectin reducesthe spread of river blindness. If it does, health experts believethe disease could be ended in Latin America. That area has only onepercent of the world’s river blindness cases. Doctors believe theymay be able to reduce the number of cases in Africa.
Health officials say that giving ivermectin more often would notcost more money. Currently, the American drug company Merck providesthe medicine at no cost.
This VOA Special English Development Report was written by JillMoss.