ast month, Pakistan eliminated the eye disease trachoma as a public health problem. This achievement means around 3.7 million people in Pakistan are no longer at risk of going blind from trachoma. Trachoma starts off as a bacterial infection that can be easily treated. But if it’s not, over time this can lead to blindness.

The disease, which can cause pain and permanent blindness, has been defeated across the country. Reaching elimination required close coordination among various stakeholders. From the outset, this process has involved a wide and varied group of partners.

Sightsavers, Pakistan’s Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination, provincial and district health authorities, other international non-profit organisations, and international donors including the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Australian NGO Cooperation Programme. Trachoma elimination was a team effort, involving eye surgeons, radio hosts, lady health workers and community and religious leaders.

Pakistan’s health system has a unique asset, its legion of female primary health care professionals, known as lady health workers. Around 100,000 female health workers are currently operating in rural regions and disadvantaged urban areas across the country. They are often the first level of healthcare providers for their local community, where they are involved in services such as immunisation, pre- and post-natal care and family planning.

Social barriers mean that some women cannot be attended to or visited by male healthcare workers. This make the role of the lady health workers even more important. They played a key role in the fight against trachoma, helping gain access to more households, examining women and children, detecting trachoma and referring them for treatment when necessary. Since 2019, Sightsavers has supported the training of more than 1,700 lady health workers and their supervisors to identify people with symptoms of trachoma.

Pakistan is part of a growing list of countries that have eliminated the disease as a public health problem. India and Vietnam, in recent weeks, have joined Pakistan and eliminated trachoma.

Alongside this, the organisation worked with Pakistan’s provincial and district-level health departments to support the training of eight surgeons to operate on patients with trachomatous trichiasis. This is the advanced form of trachoma, where a person’s eyelids have begun to turn inwards so that their eyelashes scrape painfully against the surface of the eye.

Raising awareness through local channels has been an important component of the elimination effort. Although trachoma operations can last as little as 15 minutes, some people are reluctant to step into the operating theatre. This means that once identified, people with advanced trachoma, still needed to be persuaded to undergo surgery for the condition, often through counselling.

Awareness campaigns helped spread the message that trachoma operations were safe, effective, and could help prevent sight loss. Through radio, information was shared with listeners on the best ways to avoid contracting the eye disease. Working with community and religious leaders to raise awareness about trachoma and how it can be prevented. This helped build trust and acceptance within local communities.

While these activities were ongoing, groups of volunteers distributed antibiotics that could protect the population from contracting trachoma. People in towns and villages across Pakistan also played their part by building latrines to improve hygiene and prevent the disease from spreading.

Partnerships proved to be the winning formula for trachoma elimination.

Pakistan is part of a growing list of countries that have eliminated the disease as a public health problem. India and Vietnam, in recent weeks, have joined Pakistan and eliminated trachoma.

The writer is a senior project officer at Sightsavers