By AFP - Agence France Presse
'I pull out my eyelashes to relieve the pain': Eye disease afflicts Ethiopia.
Dylan Garmba
Scheicho Scheifa is haunted by the fear of going blind.
A disease called trachoma has turned his eyelids inwards, causing his eyelashes to scar his corneas so badly that one of them has already become opaque.
The 35-year-old farmer and baker, who blinks frequently and suffers from sunlight, said that the pain is so severe that he has now “stopped working altogether”.
Most of the time he has been stuck in his house in the small village of Asano, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa.
“Recently, I learned that the surface of my eye is injured, and my left eye is severely damaged. The pain affects my ability to work and carry out daily tasks,” the father of two told AFP.
“Every time the problem manifests itself, I pull out my eyelashes to relieve the pain,” he added.
“The fear of going blind worries me whenever the pain hits.”
Trachoma is caused by infection with the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis, which is transmitted by contact with the eyes or nose of infected people.
Flies that have touched the eyes or nose of infected people can also transmit the disease.
- Two million blind
Women go blind up to four times more often than men - usually between the ages of 30 and 40 - probably because they are in more regular contact with children, the main reservoir of the disease.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), trachoma is “hyperendemic in many of the poorest and most rural areas” of the world, and Africa is the continent most affected.
Around 103 million people worldwide live in trachoma-endemic areas, almost half of them in Ethiopia.
Despite suffering from the pain since childhood, Scheicho was initially reluctant to undergo the surgery - which involves cutting open the eyelids and rotating the eyelashes away from the cornea - as it hadn't improved his mother's condition.
Finally, he was convinced by Gizachew Abebe, an ophthalmologist and member of the Christian Blind Mission, a charitable organization based in Germany.
The NGO sought to inform “the community and patients to take care of their hygiene... a very important point to prevent trachoma,” said Gizachew.
“You need to wash your face with clean water,” he told a gathering of dozens of people in a small village near Asano.
This is not easy for this rural community, which makes a three-hour trek to the nearest river and shares the water with livestock.
- 'Hard to cut'
The charity is working to improve access to drinking water and uses loudspeakers in the markets of Butajira, the region's largest city, to encourage people to get tested for trachoma.
Less advanced cases can be treated with antibiotics or creams, but more serious cases, like Scheicho's, require surgery.
He was finally operated on in a small health center without electricity in Asano during AFP's visit.
After administering a local anesthetic, Sister Tadelech made an incision in his upper eyelid.
“It's difficult to cut,” said the ophthalmologist.
But half an hour later, the operation was completed.
“I'm feeling better,” said Scheicho groggily after the operation.
By the end of last year, 21 countries, including Togo and Ghana, had eliminated trachoma as a public health problem, according to the WHO.
In Ethiopia, it may be possible to minimize the disease, but “we will not eradicate it” until “people's standard of living” improves, Gizachew said.
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