The country of Uganda is dealing with a heavily prevalent and unusual tropical disease called onchocerciasis.  It is more common for causing one side effect known as river blindness and extreme itching.  This disease originates from tiny black flies that produce and live in rapid flowing water that also has a high level of oxygen.  When an individual becomes infected it’s because an infected fly bit them and the fly leaves worm larvae in the person’s skin.  After that the larvae will continue to reproduce and grow in the body.  Nearly 18 million have this disease but unfortunately ninety- nine percent of these cases come from Africa. The disease isn’t deadly but as you can imagine, it causes a great amount of discomfort.  There are several side effects from this disease such as skin that is rough and looks similar to a lizard, skin that has spots similar to a leopard, and extreme itching.  When the worms die inside of an individual’s body it can cause extreme itching.  River blindness doesn’t have a cure or vaccine but there is a drug used called ivermectin.  This particular drug kills the offspring from adult worms through paralysis and there is also a possibility that the reproduction of the adult female worms will decrease.  The down side to this drug is that it causes several side effects such as skin rash, itching, sore glands, There are three separate organizations that are coming together to help fight the issue of river blindness.  The Ministry of Health and the Carter Center, and APOC have partnered together to help Uganda reach their goal of exterminate this disease by the year 2020.  I think it is amazing how the community had to change their way of life basically to accommodate themselves from this disease.   One example of this is when people from the outside didn’t want to marry from a particular community because of all the incidences of the disease.  They couldn’t marry off any of their community members so they had to resolve to incest, and marry their relatives.  This was a big issue because their culture goes against marrying other relatives so this reminded me of a global, social issue.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/02/health/river-blindness/index.html?hpt=he_t5 

Antiqua Thurston 2/7/13 9:19