The
National Eye Health Programme, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and
Social Welfare and other partners, recently organised a two-day training
workshop on the trachoma dossier for its partners.
The
training session brought together partners from different sectors in the country.
Speaking
at the opening ceremony held at the Khamsys Resort in Bijilo, Modou Njai,
director of Health Promotion and Education, said the workshop was for them to
come out with a dossier which is to be submitted to WHO in the next few months.
He
said the country is prepared to go into elimination of trachoma, although
achieving that means a lot of work has to be done on trachoma.
He
explained that there are four ways to eliminate trachoma, which are to ease
surgery, antibiotics treatment, facial cleanliness and environmental
improvement which stand for SAFE, as they will be using the SAFE strategy.
Basically
this development has already been ongoing at country level, because they have
cataract surgeons and health workers trained on how to do surgery, he said
Based
on that, he continued, surgery combined with antibiotics treatment plus face
washing and environmental improvement will help them in a long way to eliminate
trachoma.
‘Being
at the level of elimination does not mean that we need to relax,” he said, “but
we are almost comfortable as a country, and want to be the first country in the
African region to submit the dossier document to WHO.”
According
to him, this has been done through partnership with their partners, adding that
after the training course they are expected to put the document; and agreed
that the country is ready to eliminate trachoma and with the help of the media
and other people they can eliminate trachoma in The Gambia.
Sarjo
Kanyi, programme manager and a cataract surgeon, said their goal is to
eliminate trachoma by the year 2020, set by the World Health Organisation (WHO)
and International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, including their main
partners SightSavers and the International Trachoma Initiative.
He
said the global target is to eliminate trachoma by 2020.
In
Africa, The Gambia, Mali and Ghana “are leading in trying to eliminate
trachoma”, he said.
He
said the programme will generate ideas from all and sundry to get a thorough
document, which will be submitted to the WHO country office to be finally
submitted to Geneva.
He
said a team of experts would visit the country to look at the situation on the
ground, to see whether The Gambia is ready to achieve elimination of trachoma.
Robin
Bailey, professor of tropical medicine at the London School of Hygiene, said
“there is possibility that The Gambia can eliminate trachoma”.
