As the first country in Africa, Niger has succeeded in eradicating hives. Hives is a disease coming from a parasite, a small worm, which is transmitted to the skin through bites from the knotting simulium. When the worm enters the skin, it reproduces, giving itching, dry skin and flaking. It can be painful enough in itself. If the worms move to the eyes it can cause inflammation and then blindness, hence the name of the disease. – It’s a really disgusting disease, says Jørgen Kurtzhals. He is the dean of education at the Faculty of Health Culture at the University of Copenhagen and professor of clinical parasitology and international health. – But most people who have the disease do not notice it. If you only have an area in the skin with a few worms you can live well with them for many years without getting sick. This is often the case with parasites. They are good at flying under the radar because they specialize in living in foreign organisms, says Kurtzhals. For the past 40 years, Kurtzhals has been working on parasites and infectious diseases in Africa and Asia. Although he has not researched hives specifically, he knows a lot about diseases that occur from parasites. A “game changer” people in Niger no longer need fear from the knob. But hives are still a problem in several places in the world. The World Health Organization, WHO, does not have new figures on how many are infected by the worms providing hives. But the organization assumes that around 250 million people need mass treatment. Most live in sub -Saharan Africa. When giving mass treatment against a disease, heeled population groups are treated against the disease, whether or not they are infected. This is to get rid of the disease. This is what has made it possible to eradicate the disease in Niger, in addition to spray insecticides in areas where you know that the knob is alive. Previously, it has been difficult to treat the disease. – If you kill the worm while in the skin, it can secrete substances that can cause severe allergic reactions, says Kurtzhals. But in the late 1980s, a new type of treatment was introduced: Ivermectin. – Ivermectin does not kill the adult larvae, but the larvae. This made it possible to keep the disease somewhat under control. It was a “game changer” to control the disease, the professor explains. Although Niger is the only African country that has been certified free from the hives of the World Health Organization, progress is taking place in several countries. In 2022, Senegal stopped treating the disease because it appears to be under control. On a world level, there are 1.8 million people living in areas where there was a great risk of getting river blindness, where there is now no need for mass treatment. Can move back to the rivers there is a step in itself that people in Niger no longer risk the extreme itching and to be blinded by hives. But there is also another reason why it is good that the disease is past in the country. The knob that brings with it the disease lives namely places where water flows. This means that there are mainly people who live near rivers who risk getting river blindness. It is best for people to live near the rivers to have good access to water, for example in order to grow food. – If people associate the rivers with illness, they move. This means that some of the areas that are particularly suitable for agriculture have been abandoned for fear of hives, Kurtzhals explains. The extinction of river blindness causes people to move back to areas along the rivers. – Niger is a dry land, so it is especially important that you can live around the rivers, adds Kurtzhals. An overlooked disease student blindness is a so -called “neglected tropical disease”. Known as NTDS, Neglected Tropical Diseases, this is a categorization of 21 different diseases. These diseases are neglected, overlooked or neglected, because they have not received as much attention from authorities, researchers and health organizations as other diseases, such as tubercolosis and HIV/AIDS. This happens, among other things, because the neglected tropical diseases especially affect the poorest and most marginalized people in the world. “You can say that almost all diseases affecting low- and middle-insect countries, ie diseases that do not affect the global north, have been neglected and get too few resources,” says Kurtzhals. Although these diseases are largely overlooked, slow progress occurs to treat this group of diseases from parasites, bacteria, fungi, poison and virus. 54 countries in the world have managed to eradicate at least one of the diseases from their entire area.
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