Thousands suffer from river blindness in Borno

Some 480,000 rural dwellers in Borno State, northeastern Nigeria, are infected with onchocerciasis (river blindness) while another 40,000 have varying degrees of the ailment, The Guardian, a Lagos daily, reported on Friday citing an official. The coordinator of the State Programme on River Blindness, Alhaji Bukar Galadima, said on Wednesday in the state capital, Maiduguri, that 1.1 million rural dwellers were at a risk of contracting the disease, transmitted by the black fly, which causes inflammation of the skin and can lead to blindness. He was speaking at a one-day workshop for health officials drawn from the 12 affected local councils, The Guardian reported. Galadima said that the federal and state governments are collaborating with the World Health Organisation, the African Programme on Onchocerciasis Control and Helen Keller International, to control the disease. The country's representative of Helen Keller, Dr. Musa Obadiah, said that since 1999 when the organisation signed a memorandum of understanding with Borno State, it had administered about 683,693 people with Ivermecin, under its community-directed treatment, the newspaper reported.