How The Carter Center is Involved in River Blindness Elimination

How is The Carter Center involved?

In 1987, The Carter Center became involved in the effort to control onchocerciasis by becoming an advocate for the Mectizan® Donation Program launched that year by Merck. In 1996, the official beginning of the Center's River Blindness Program, The Carter Center expanded its role in the coalition to fight the disease by absorbing most of the operations of the River Blindness Foundation, a nongovernmental development organization.

Today, the Carter Center River Blindness Program assists ministries of health in 11 endemic countries to help residents and local health workers institute and sustain Mectizan treatment and health education activities.

In the Americas, the Center is the sponsoring agency for the Onchocerciasis Elimination Program of the Americas (OEPA), the technical and coordinating body of a multinational, multiagency coalition working to end illness and transmission of onchocerciasis in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Venezuela.

The Carter Center is one of the only nongovernmental organizations combating river blindness in both Africa and the Americas. Since its inception, the Carter Center's River Blindness Program has assisted ministries of health in administering more than 100 million treatments of Mectizan.

The key challenge for the River Blindness Program is to continue to reinforce Mectizan distribution networks, educate the communities about the efficacy and safety of the medication, and enlist the support of community leaders.

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Health Programs

River Blindness Program