Trachoma

Extremely painful and contagious

Imagine what it would be like to have broken bits of eyelash continually scraping against your eye.

That’s what trachoma causes. It’s extremely agonizing and can devastate entire villages.

What starts off like conjunctivitis, ends up – after years of painful and repeated infection – with your eyelids turning in. This makes your eyelashes scrape the surface of your eye.

Eventually your corneas become so scraped, so scarred, you permanently go blind.

Trachoma is caused by Chlamydia Trachomatis. It is passed on through contact with the eye discharge from the infected person or by eye-seeking flies.

Eye doctors call trachoma ‘a disease of the crèche’. It’s caught and spread among young families. Most of the time, little children pass it on when they play together. Or, mums and dads spread the infection when they wipe their children’s faces.

Trachoma is a horrible, painful disease which affects more than 84 million people around the world.

The good news is, with your help, trachoma can be both prevented and treated.

Jerald's Story

To a little boy in Africa, like Jerald, what's the harm in letting a fly land on his face? There are so many buzzing around him all day.

Jerald didn't realise that the flies were infecting him with Trachoma. It is the world's most virulent form of preventable blindness. Because of Trachoma, eight million people today - especially women and children - are totally blind.

As Trachoma spread into Jerald's eyelids, the inflammation turned his eyelashes inwards, so they began to scratch his precious eyes.

That scratching is agony ... and if Jerald received no help he would soon be completely blind.

We didn't let that happen. As soon as cbm field workers found him, they gave him a simple ointment and taught him how to keep his face clean.

That is all it took. Jerald is safe from agony, and his sight is safe from blindness by a thousand scratches. But if we hadn't found Jerald, he would probably be blind by now.

Facts about Trachoma