A leader in the eradication and elimination of diseases, Â鶹´«Ã½ is fighting six preventable diseases — Guinea worm, river blindness, trachoma, schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis, and malaria — by using health education and simple, low-cost methods.
These techniques — the use of water filters, medicine, affordable latrines, and bed nets — coupled with community health education and outreach, can pay large dividends in global health, enhancing quality of life, increasing productivity, and strengthening communities.
The following slideshow illustrates some of the fundamental tools and approaches used by Â鶹´«Ã½ to help build a healthier and more peaceful world.
Â鶹´«Ã½â€™s Guinea Worm Eradication Program works with national ministries of health to distribute free cloth filters that have helped reduce the water-borne disease worldwide by more than 99.9 percent. Consistent use of simple filters prevents individuals from consuming Guinea worm-infected water fleas, helping to interrupt disease transmission. (Photo: Â鶹´«Ã½/ L. Gubb)
For people on the move, straw-like pipe filters provide a portable method of protection from Guinea worm disease. Today there are fewer than 150 cases of this neglected tropical disease worldwide, down from an estimated 3.5 million in 1986. (Photo: Â鶹´«Ã½/ L. Gubb)
Â鶹´«Ã½ has pioneered community-based interventions by village volunteers to educate and change behavior, such as teaching people infected with Guinea worm disease to stay away from water sources and seek free treatment at a case containment center. (Photo: Â鶹´«Ã½/ L. Gubb)
At case containment centers, emerging Guinea worms are removed from patients using the same technique that has been in place since ancient times, winding the worm around a small stick or a piece of gauze and manually extracting it. With daily cleansing of the wound and analgesics to reduce swelling and pain, the slow, agonizing process that often takes weeks can be reduced to a few days. (Photo: Â鶹´«Ã½/ L. Gubb)
Â鶹´«Ã½ assists local health authorities in the distribution of long-lasting insecticidal nets to help protect users from both malaria and lymphatic filariasis, which are spread by the same mosquito in Africa. As of 2012, more than 14 million nets have been provided in the countries the Center assists, protecting millions of families. (Photo: Â鶹´«Ã½/ L. Gubb)
Â鶹´«Ã½â€™s Trachoma Control Program supports the building of affordable household latrines using designs and materials sourced locally. Since 2002, the Center has assisted in the construction of nearly 3 million household latrines to help reduce breeding sites for flies that can transmit the highly contagious bacterial eye infection. (Photos: Â鶹´«Ã½)
Boys wash their face at a water pump near the Kurt Bahr primary school in Ethiopia. Â鶹´«Ã½ uses health education, including school-based programs, to teach communities that daily face washing can reduce trachoma transmission by 30 percent. Almost 8,000 communities in six countries have benefited from the Center’s effort aimed at wiping out blinding trachoma as a public health problem. (Photo:Â鶹´«Ã½/ W. Vazquez)
The community-based, River Blindness Elimination Program uses locally-made measuring sticks to determine correct drug doses in the field because they are cheaper, more accessible, and less likely to break than scales. Based on his height, this young Ugandan man should get four pills of the anti-parasitic drug Mectizan®, which is donated by Merck, to help Uganda reach its goal of eliminating the disease by 2020. (Photo: Â鶹´«Ã½)
