Woman with trachoma. Photo credit: HKI
Just recently launching a five-year plan to eliminate NTDs, Kenya is working tirelessly to ensure that the country will soon be free of these parasitic diseases. Check out what’s currently being done in the fight against trachoma, one of the seven most common NTDs, in an article recently published in All Africa (the largest online distributor of Africa-focused news) and includes a quote from Global Network Managing Director Dr. Neeraj Mistry:
“Olenarau — Had a community health worker not found him at the rural Kenyan village of Olenarau, 65-year-old Tonke Nalakiti would still be blaming his failing sight on old age.
But the health worker, who was trained to identify patients infected with trachoma, succeeded in convincing Nalakiti that his condition could be corrected through simple surgery and antibiotics.
After a swab of iodine and a jab of anesthesia to ease the pain of incision, the elder from the remote village south of the capital, Nairobi, had the infection surgically corrected in less than 15 minutes.
National surveys indicate that Nalakiti is among some 3.4 percent of patients in Kajiado County whose trachoma has reached the blinding stage, making it a serious public health problem in that region and many other similarly remote areas with little access to health care and screening.” Click here to continue reading.
