A World Health Organization coordinated program, known as APOC, launched in 1995 to build on the success of the earlier Onchocerciasis Control Programme in West Africa by extending river blindness control to 19 additional endemic countries, including Angola, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, mainly across central and eastern Africa. The programme's central strategy was community directed treatment with ivermectin, resting on four pillars: the drug's donation by Merck, the affected communities' own commitment to the treatment strategy, a partnership spanning national governments, international donors and nongovernmental development organizations, and continued operational research feeding directly back into the programme's methods. Between 1995 and 2010 APOC was estimated to have prevented 8.2 million years of healthy life from being lost to onchocerciasis related disease and death, at a cost of about 257 million dollars, before its work was folded into the World Health Organization's broader neglected tropical disease elimination efforts.
Facts
Launch YearSourced to the subject's own account End YearSourced to the subject's own account Program StatusSourced to the subject's own accountConcluded; ended in 2015, with aspects of its work absorbed into the WHO Expanded Special Programme for the Elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases (ESPEN) 1 Sponsoring BodySourced to the subject's own accountWorld Health Organization 1 Health GoalSourced to the subject's own accountEliminate onchocerciasis (river blindness) in endemic African countries through community-directed treatment with ivermectin 1 Measured ResultsSourced to the subject's own accountOverall transmission of onchocerciasis declined across the program's endemic countries during its operation 1 Program status (class)Sourced to the subject's own account Classification
Program KindSourced to the subject's own account Connections
Associated With
WHO-led onchocerciasis elimination program, successor to the WHO Onchocerciasis Control Programme
Delivers Practice
Entity-backed identity for the program-kind enum value this public health program already carries, resolved to a health practice by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The program-kind fact itself stays on the program unchanged.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Onchocerciasis
WikipediaElimination section, opening sentence
In 1995, the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC) was initiated to eliminate onchocerciasis in African countries where the disease was endemic.
Elimination section, third sentence
The APOC ended in 2015 and aspects of its work has been taken over by the WHO Expanded Special Programme for the Elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases (ESPEN).
Elimination section, second and third sentences
The initiative relied primarily on the use of the antiparasitic drug ivermectin. The initiative was to set up community-directed treatment with ivermectin for those at risk of infection.
Elimination section, fourth sentence
Overall transmission has declined.
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