Vision of eye care charity

Trachoma causes blindness but can be treated, and one charity brings such cures to poor areas, writes MICHAEL McHALE .

THE EYELIDS turn inwards. They make contact with the eyeball, scratching the cornea and leading to excruciating pain and scarring. Usually there is only one outcome: blindness.

These are the effects of trachoma, an infectious disease that, according to figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO), affects about 84 million people worldwide. Eight million become visually impaired as a result, causing 3 per cent of the world’s blindness. Yet it is preventable.

The disease is most prevalent in developing countries that have difficulties with water supply, overcrowding and large numbers of flies, thereby triggering infection.

It is spread from person to person, often from child to child or from child to mother. A disease of poverty, it was only eradicated in Ireland in the 1930s.

Orbis Ireland is a charity that hopes to halt the spread of trachoma in two of the largest regions in Ethiopia – Gamo and Gofa – which combined have a population of two million. Of this population, 40 per cent are infected with the disease while 70,000 have already been made blind by it.