Doug Steinberg, HKI’s Deputy Regional Director for West Africa, joins the team traveling with NY Times Journalist, Nicholas Kristof. The picture to the left is Doug with Kalifa Doumbia, a community distributor of the drug, Ivermectin.
The village of Moli is located about 85 miles south of Niger’s capital Niamey on the edge of the W National Park, a wildlife reserve with big game, small creatures and a variety of bird-life. The area lies west of the Niger River, with many tributaries flowing through it. These streams dry up in the long, dry season, but they come to life in the rainy season, which is just beginning. Among the life is the black fly, a vector for Onchocerciasis (river blindness).
I just joined the HKI group traveling with Nick Kristof and the two “Win-a-Trip” winners, and we visited a village where Onchocerciasis control, mainly through distributing the drug Mectizan®, donated by Merck & Co., Inc., occurred from 1987 to 1996. The disease is debilitating; micro-filaria (or tiny worms) infest the body, form painful nodes below the skin, and eventually destroy vision. Thanks to the mass drug treatment, Onchocerciasis has been brought under control, and no carriers have been detected since 1992. The young people are free of the disease, although there are a few older folks who suffer from it. One, Natchimou Bagna, now 47, was blinded when he was about 17 years old. » Read more: More Frightening Than Lions
