The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared Nepal to be the first country in South-East Asia Region to defeat trachoma, world’s leading infectious cause of blindness.
- The eye disease was second leading cause of preventable blindness in Nepal in 1980s.
- It puts more than 190 million people in 41 countries at the risk of blindness.
- In 1998, the Who had resolved to eliminate trachoma as a public health problem.
- In 2002, the Nepal Government launched the National Trachoma Programme in order to eliminate the disease.
- It helped in the reduction of the active trachoma by 40 percent from 2002 to 2005.
- To increase awareness, the national trachoma programme collaborated with the Ministry of Education to include a module on trachoma in the school curriculum.
- The Nepal government, through the ministry of water supply and sanitation, provided incentives to local communities and districts to build and maintain toilets, measures that were crucial to improve sanitation and reduce the disease carrying flies.
- India had self-declared itself free from infective Trachoma in Dec 2017.
- It met the goal of trachoma elimination as specified by WHO under its GET2020 (Global Elimination of Trachoma by the year 2020) program.
- Trachoma is an eye disease caused by infection with bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis and is particularly common in young children.
