a rare but deadly disease... onchocerciasis is pretty bad to.

Here's a brief video (just over seven minutes) explaining the major areas of our work, including: cataract, river blindness, trachoma and rehabilitation

Empowering communities to fight both river blindness (onchocerciasis) and malaria. Results from a WHO research study show how community volunteers have doubled treatment coverage.

This is a trailer for our documentary "37 Million and Counting". African river blindness (onchocerciasis) is a disease caused by a parasite worm that plagues 37 million people worldwide. It is the second leading cause of infectious blindness and the majority of cases are found in Africa. More information can be found at www.37millionandcounting.com

UFAR is an African-inspired, US-based nonprofit charitable organization. Its primary mission is to participate and partnership with other organizations in the eradication of onchocerciasis, also commonly known as riverblindness, a major public health problem in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and throughout much of Africa, Latin America, and Yemen and they need our help especially in the remote regions of the Congo. A comprehensive overview of UFAR's origin, goals and activities can be found in the pages at: http://riverblindness.org/ Please join in helping raise awareness as well as the money needed to eradicate this lesser known but devastating problem in Africa. http://www.riverblindness.org/cblog/ http://riverblindness.org/index.php?menu=tn6&page=Contribute

This is a slideshow of still images from our documentary "37 Million and Counting". African river blindness (onchocerciasis) is a disease caused by a parasite worm that plagues 37 million people worldwide. It is the second leading cause of infectious blindness and the majority of cases are found in Africa. More information can be found at www.37millionandcounting.com

This is the first trailer for the new High Def documentary film "37 Million and Counting" Check out 37millionandcounting(dot)com for more information. Imagine having thousands of tiny worms swimming through your eyes for years, eventually blinding you. African river blindness (onchocerciasis) is a disease that plagues 37 million people worldwide, and is the second leading infectious cause of blindness. Onchocerca volvulus, the parasitic worm that causes the disease, is transmitted by the bite of a blackfly and deposited under human skin where it grows in a protective nodule to lengths of 50 centimeters (19 in.). Adult worms can live up to 20 years in a human host, releasing millions of tiny worms (microfilariae) each year. These microfilariae wreak havoc on the body, causing skin lesions, seizures, and the permanent, crippling blindness for which the disease is best known. River blindness is most dramatically a problem in 27 countries on the African continent, where over 90 million people are at risk of infection. Incredibly, this disease is both preventable and treatable by either (1) controlling the blackfly population with pesticides or by managing their breeding sites in running water, or (2) by administering the drug Ivermectin which kills the immature worms that constitute the clinical disease. Nodules harboring the parasite can be removed surgically in some cases, but this procedure comes with significant risk and is not a feasible method of mass treatment. © 2007 Edell Films www.37millionandcounting.com 1 In 1987, pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co., Inc. made the unprecedented announcement that it would donate Mectizan® (Ivermectin) to "all who needed it for as long as needed". So far Merck has spent $383 million to reach 60 million people in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, and has partnered up with the delivery company DHL to help get Mectizan to the patients who need it. Mectizan is a safe but insufficiently effective pharmaceutical used to treat river blindness once a person has been infected by the parasite. It works by killing the tiny immature worms called "microfilariae" that invade the body, thereby eliminating most clinical symptoms of the disease. Mectizan does not kill the adult worms, however, which remain in the body producing millions of microfilariae each year. Because the adult worms are spared, patients must remain on treatment for as long as it takes the adult worms to die, or for as long as disease transmission occurs; a period that now runs between 20 to 25 years. Sustainability is a major obstacle to this method of treatment. In addition to the long treatment regimen, the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC), the main organization overseeing Mectizan treatment programs, will dissolve when its funding is terminated in 2010, forcing Merck to seek out other methods of distribution. It is hoped that community directed programs, which have shown promise on the small-scale, will continue to control river blindness beyond 2010. If the intensity of river blindness control wanes during this period, or if new drugs that kill adult worms as well as microfilariae are not developed, experts warn that river blindness could return full-scale. River blindness is still an important public health problem and a significant threat to people living in areas where transmission occurs. Does Mectizan reach the people it is intended to reach? Do all of the 37 million currently infected with the parasite have access to Ivermectin? What will happen when the main organizing body that distributes Ivermectin, the African Programme for River blindness Control, dissolves in 2010? What must be done to prevent a significant recurrence of this disease?

Google Tech Talks February, 8 2008 ABSTRACT Emporiatrics or Travel Medicine is a discipline within medicine that prepares a traveler using vaccines, medicines and knowledge to avoid disease when visiting a foreign destination. I will discuss the current mapping of interventions offered to patients planning trips and illustrate with examples how the constraints of patient needs and the risks at a specific destination overlap to arrive at a list of recommendations that are offered a traveler before departure. Depending on crowd size I can run through personal case examples for those who are planning an exotic trip. I hope to also highlight limitations of the practice of emporiatrics and suggest where Google can potentially offer a useful "expert system" that might be modulated by risk, price points and insurance coverage using disease maps from publicly available surveillance data and patient records, using the Kaiser Epic Data system. Speaker: D. Scott Smith. Scott grew up in Boulder Colorado and attended medical school at the University of Colorado. He went to public health school at Harvard University where an interest in Tropical Public Health was further developed, leading to a year long adventure on a Fulbright scholarship in Cali, Colombia, seeking improved diagnostic technologies to understand the epidemiology of leishmaniasis, and onchocerciasis (River Blindness). He completed residency then a Fellowship at Stanford University in Medicine then Infectious Disease & Geographic Medicine. Scott practices at Kaiser in Redwood City, California where he heads the HIV/AIDS clinic and oversees the travel medicine services locally but also is developing regionalization of the Travel Medicine Services for Kaiser Northern California. He co-chairs the biennial National Conference on Preparing International Travelers. He teaches at Stanford Medical School in the Microbiology and Immunology Division and directs a course for undergraduates in Human Biology entitled "Parasites & Pestilence: Public Health Challenges". He was recently presented the Bloomfield award in recognition of excellence in the teaching of clinical medicine at Stanford School of Medicine. Acknowledging Candid's epiphany (after tumultuous world travel) that staying in one's own backyard is a pathway to happiness, in his spare time he gardens and keeps chickens and bees. As one's own content is not a final destination, he recently traveled with family to Uganda and South Africa to speak and visit an AIDS study site and to see family later this year. http://www.permanente.net/homepage/doctor/scottsmith/ http://www.stanford.edu/class/humbio103/

Onchocerciasis

Onchocerciasis swimming in the anterior chamber of this 40 year old. You can see the tiny worm wiggling!