Accelerate is supporting governments across 14 African countries to eliminate trachoma, the world’s leading infectious cause of blindness. Here are some of this year’s highlights.
In January, we joined the first ever World Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) Day to raise awareness of the group of diseases trachoma belongs to.
In the first three months of 2020, we supported teams in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe to deliver 12.6 million antibiotics to treat and help stop the spread of NTDs.
When COVID-19 struck, field activities were paused. But we immediately started planning ahead. Together with the World Health Organization (WHO), governments and partners, we began developing a risk assessment and mitigation action tool, which would help to safely and quickly resume fieldwork once suspensions were lifted.
In the meantime, in the field, we saw health workers going above and beyond their duties, such as Babacar in Senegal. Under strict COVID-19 safety measures, Babacar continued to perform surgery for trichiasis, the advanced stage of trachoma, on people who came to his clinic.
We provided training for more than 30,000 community volunteers this year, including those identifying cases of trachoma and those distributing antibiotics.
We won a Pierre Fabre Foundation award for our TT (trachomatous trichiasis) Tracker app.
We heard the good news that our efforts were contributing to the bigger picture, when the WHO announced that the number of people needing surgery to treat the advanced stage of trachoma had declined from 7.6 million in 2002 to 2 million in 2020.
We continued working hard on activities that didn’t need close contact with communities, such as our support to ministries on integrating WASH and NTD data, and bringing together NTD data at the national level.
In July, treatments could be resumed and we supported one million of them in Nigeria . Thanks to our detailed preparation we continued work in the field rapidly, with special safety measures in place.
We adapted personal protective equipment through a face shield design challenge to find the most feasible way to wear magnifying glasses, a face shield and a mask for health workers assessing eyes for trachoma and carrying out surgery – without the protective layers steaming up.
In October in Burkina Faso, we began our first Tropical Data surveys since COVID-19 broke out, with the aim of surveying more than 20,000 people for trachoma.
Surgeries resumed in Katsina, Nigeria. Each time we resume work we are reviewing all our activities, and using what we learn to adapt work where needed in other areas and countries.
We close the year feeling optimistic, with all the countries Accelerate supports ready to continue their journeys towards eliminating trachoma.
Together, we are just a few years away from eliminating this ancient disease.
Explore the journey of Accelerate from its inception through maps and images in our story map here.
We’d like to thank every individual supporter and partner organisation involved in trachoma elimination in 2020. We are especially grateful to the funders of Accelerate:
Children's Investment Fund Foundation
The ELMA Foundation
UK aid
Virgin Unite
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Women on the frontline, like Aishatu, help make sure that no one is left behind in the fight against the potentially blinding disease trachoma.
Distributing neglected tropical disease (NTD) preventative treatments in Africa can teach us a lot about rolling out a COVID-19 vaccine.
Across Tanzania, six newly qualified ophthalmic assistants are putting their skills to work supporting remote eye screening camps and testing sight in local hospitals.