Socio-Economic Impact Of Onchocerciasis With Particular Reference To Females And Children: A Review

Abstract

The socio-economic impact of onchocerciasis (river blindness) on humans is reviewed with special reference to females and children. The results of many studies reveal that onchocerciasis is usually a serious threat to public health and an impediment to socio-economic development in areas with high intensity and high endemicity of the disease. In such places, blindness and serious visual impairment are common, and mortality among the blind may be four times as high as among non-blind persons of the same age in the same community. As a result of debilitation and blindness, the infected person is unable to maintain for long any type of productive activity. Inhabitants of fertile river valleys move to the less fertile upland country. Many young men migrate to urban areas, reducing the productivity of the community and disrupting family life. Employees classified as having a severe Onchocercal Skin Disease (OSD) earned 15 % less in daily wages than those not infected. People with Onchocercal Skin Disease are stigmatized in their communities. OSD limits the range of social involvement and can affect sexual life of affected individuals. With reference to women and children, young females with OSD suffer stigmatization more than young men. This affects their age of marriage and the kind of partners they marry, limiting them to already married men, divorced men, elderly men, childless men, etc. Severe itching that often accompanies OSD may reduce the period lactating mothers breastfeed their babies. Children, particularly females, from households headed by individuals with onchocerciasis, especially blindness and OSD are more at risk of being school dropouts. Academic performance of school children with visual impairment is adversely affected. To reduce these effects, there is need for intense public enlightenment to augment the efforts of World Health Organization (WHO) in combating the disease using mass treatment with ivermectin (Mectizan).