River Blindness Health Video

Onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness is the world's second leading infectious cause of blindness. Get expert tips and advice on preventing, diagnosing, and treating onchocerciasis (river blindness) in this video.

Take Action

See your doctor about any river blindness symptoms
Follow all of your doctor's recommendations
Be wary of traveling

About this Author

Dr. Patel grew up in Texas and studied at the University of Texas at Arlington. In 1996, he graduated as a member of the Gold Key International Optometric Honor Society with a doctor of optometry degree from the University of Houston. Dr. Patel completed a residency in Hospital Based and Geriatric Eye Care at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Portland, Oregon. During his residency, Dr. Patel served as a clinical instructor to interns from Pacific University and the New England College of Optometry. Dr. Patel has provided hours of clinical procedures workshops for both the Oregon and Alberta, Canada Optometric Associations. He has volunteered his skills on an eye care team in Thailand, and the Special Olympics programs in Oregon. Dr. Patel also serves as a clinical examiner for the National Boards in Optometry, as a consultant to the Portland VA Medical Center, and Adjunct Faculty for the Pacific University College of Optometry.

DR. RAJ PATEL: Hi. I'm Dr. Raj Patel, optometrist at Vancouver Contact Lens and Vision Clinic, here in Vancouver, Washington, and I'd like to talk to you a little bit a little known eye problem in this part of the world, but a very serious problem in another part of the world, and that's called river blindness. River blindness is caused by a parasitic worm that breeds in fast-flowing rivers. It is actually a major cause of blindness in West and Central Africa, and it affects adults in 30s and 40s, a really productive time in life. It has affected 18 million people, and roughly 300,000 of them are irreversibly blind, 99% of those lived within a particular region in Western Africa, and a further 125 million people are currently at risk from the infection. As well as causing blindness, river blindness creates nodules in the skin that causes severe itching and this results in damage to the pigment and over time the skin becomes mottled, and this causes further problems because depigmented spots are more susceptible to skin cancer. The impact of river blindness is really substantial. It is endemic to certain parts of Africa and it has two really important implications. First of all, the children miss out on educational opportunities over there because they are staying at home and acting as full-time caregivers to their older relatives who had become blind from the disease and secondly, people tend to flee this areas that are hardest hit with this infection, and so it leaves these ghost villages behind them, and unfortunately those ghost villages happen to be areas of really fertile land next to the river. And so, there are many groups that are working on, providing treatment to these individuals that live in that part of the world, and the disease is really treated most effectively by the use of the drug called ivermectin, and ivermectin is delivered orally; it is a pill that is taken annually once a year to help deal with it. The way that drug works is that it makes the female worm temporarily infertile, and so it kills the larvae which lives in the skin and the eye, and pharmaceutical companies have pledged to donate the drug and volunteers deliver it to people in need. And in the recent year, ivermectin is delivered to 11 million people. And prevention is another way of helping to break the cycle of infection, and so there are some groups working on that to reduce the number of flies by spraying the infected areas down with insecticide, by slowing down the fast-flowing rivers, by studying dams, making the river less attractive as breeding grounds, reducing the exposure to flies by using protective garments, and then ultimately by providing a yearly dose of the drug ivermectin, that's really the way that people in part of the world will keep their eyesight. So, if you happen to be an individual that is travelling to that part of the world, please visit with your eye doctor and talk to them seriously about this very less known but very serious sight-threatening problem that exist in that part of the world which is called river blindness.