Multinational Pharmaceutical company, Pfizer Inc, is set to donate 100 million doses of its long-acting antibiotic, Zithromax (azithromycin) to developing countries by 2008, to help them eliminate blinding trachoma, the world's leading cause of preventable blindness.

In Nigeria, it is estimated that a blindness prevalence of about 20 per cent is due to trachoma. Over 90 per cent of people affected do not seek medical attention, mainly as a result of cost of treatment.

The disease is of public health significance, especially in the northern parts of the country, hence, the need for effective trachoma control programme with emphasis on lid surgery.

Essentially, trachoma is the leading cause of preventable blindness worldwide. It is caused by infection with the Chlamydia trachomatis bacterium, making it both treatable and preventable. There is no need for a single person to go blind from trachoma, yet, that is the fate of more than seven million people worldwide, with an additional 500 million at risk.

A statement from the company, a key partner in the WHO Alliance for the Global Elimination of Blinding Trachoma (GET 2020), disclosed that Pfizer had already donated, through the International Trachoma Initiative, 37 million doses of Zithromax used as one component of the SAFE strategy - a community-based plan of action that emphasizes the medical, behavioral, and environmental changes essential to the control of trachoma.

The four action steps comprising SAFE are: surgery, antibiotic treatment (using the revolutionary single dose preparation Zithromax), face washing and access to clean water, strengthened by increased health education.

The World Health Organi-sation (WHO) has reported that several countries are making progress to combat this infectious eye disease with the implementation of the strategy, which has led to a reduction of people affected by it from 360 million in 1985 to around 80 million today.

It will be recalled that in 2004, Pfizer donated more than $268 million in products and health education grants in its efforts with the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, co-founders of the International Trachoma Initiative (ITI), to eliminate blinding trachoma.

Blinding Trachoma, which originates from an eye infection that is spread from person to person, is frequently passed from child to child and from child to mother within the family, especially in environmental conditions of water shortages, flies, and crowded households.

Through the discharge from an infected person's eyes, trachoma is passed on by hands, on clothing, or by flies that land on the person's face. Infections often begin during infancy or childhood and become chronic.

If left untreated, these infections eventually cause the eyelid to turn inward, which in turn, causes the eye lashes to rub on the eyeball, resulting in intense pain and scarring of the front of the eye leading to irreversible blindness.