The Onchocerciasis Control Programme (OCP) based in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, is to be transformed into a Multi-disease Surveillance Centre when the Programme terminates by the year 2002, the Director of OCP, Dr K. Yankum Dadzie, told World Health Assembly delegates at a special briefing in Geneva today.

Onchocerciasis, also known as "river blindness", causes serious illnesses, including visual impairment, blindness and other conditions.

Dr Dadzie said that OCP was winding down after 25 years of successful operation. It is close to eliminating onchocerciasis as a public health problem and as an obstacle to social and economic development in 11 previously oncho-endemic countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.

He stated that the Multi-disease Surveillance Centre, which would be involved in integrated disease surveillance in the West African sub-region, would inherit the facilities, infrastructure and some of the staff of OCP.

At the time of OCP's launch in 1974, more than one million people in West Africa suffered from onchocerciasis, of which 100,000 had serious eye problems including 35,000 who were blind. Today, there are hardly any infections within the original area of operations and vector control efforts have almost ceased.

Some 1.5 million people who were infected with onchocerciasis no longer have any trace of the disease and by the turn of the century, it is estimated that OCP will have prevented almost 300,000 cases of blindness in the 11 countries involved in the programme. Successful vector activities are opening up an estimated 25 million hectares of riverine land for resettlement and cultivation. This land has the potential to feed an additional 17 million people.

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