The World Health Organization said today Friday will mark the end of its Onchocerciasis Control Program in West Africa, which has for three decades fought the disease also known as river blindness.

According to the WHO, 600,000 cases of the disease have been prevented under the program, allowing 18 million people to grow up free of the threat of river blindness.  The U.N. agency said thousands of farmers are starting to reclaim 25 million hectares of fertile river land -- enough to feed 17 million people -- in areas where they once feared being struck blind by parasites transmitted by black flies.

The control program started in 1974, when as many as 10 percent of people in severely affected regions were blind and 30 percent had severe visual handicaps.  Farmers had begun leaving their fields amid a growing realization that something associated with the rivers was causing blindness.

The WHO set out to eliminate the disease and to make sure West African countries could continue monitoring for it after its elimination, two goals it says have largely been achieved.  Initially, the control program focused on spraying of larvicide to kill black flies, but in 1988, it began distributing the anti-parasite drug ivermectin, which Merck offered free of charge.

WHO Director General Gro Harlem Brundtland said the campaign's success should "inspire all of us in public health to dream big dreams" (WHO release, Dec. 4).