Public Health Update

I wrote this story on African river blindness for the UC Berkeley School of Optometry's annual magazine as a both backgrounder and an update on the disease. The parasite-driven menace was downgraded from a major public health crisis with the help of a UC Berkeley scientist, but it's still an issue. 
​
A statue of a boy leading a blind middle-aged man sits in front of the World Health Organization’s Geneva headquarters as a poignant reminder of African river blindness. At the disease’s peak in the 1970s, half of adult males in 11 West African countries went blind around the age of 40. The statue has a subtext: the boy in the lead already carries Onchocerca volvulus, the parasite that eventually will cycle the blindness for yet another generation. Onchocerciasis is often called African river blindness for the habitat of the black fly that spreads it and the continent where more than 90 percent of the blinding cases occur. But at its heart, it's the story of a worm.  Continue