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Cote d'Ivoire: River blindness is back
The parasitic disease river blindness, once thought to have been eradicated from Côte d'Ivoire, has re-emerged in some regions following years of armed conflict that wiped out mechanisms for surveillance and control, health officials say.
The World Health Organization (WHO) in 2002 closed its West Africa programme to eliminate river blindness, or onchocerciasis, as a public health threat. That was also the year an armed rebellion divided the country.
Studies carried out from July to September 2007 following incidental reports of cases in forest areas in south-western Côte d'Ivoire found that 14.29 percent of under-five children there suffer from onchocerciasis.
