This spring an effort to eradicate river blindness from Bioko, a small island that is part of Equatorial Guinea, will get underway. The goal — to completely rid the island of the blood sucking black fly, Simuliidae, by intensively spraying the island with pesticides.
River blindness is a parasitic worm that lives in the gut of the black fly and gets transmitted to humans when the insect bites people. The diseases is endemic in many parts of Africa and South America — in some regions of the world, up to 15% of the population has been blinded by the diseases.
The obvious problem with trying to eradicate the black fly, however, is how to do it without killing other important insect species in the area. Dr. Rory Post, who is heading up the project, says this will be addressed by extensive monitoring of the islands fauna to ensure the pesticides are not destroying other species.
It will be interesting to see if they can do it, but even if this project succeeds it is likely to be viable only on isolated areas such as islands since in the continent, the flies can simply come back in from other areas because there is no feasible way to spray the entire area that Simuliidae covers.
Unfortunately the World Health Organization optimistically estimates that it will take at least 12 years to eradicate river blindness throughout the world with drug therapy that can treat the disease.
Source:
African island in disease campaign. Toby Murcott, The BBC, September 7, 2000.
New project to eradicate river blindness.