EndTrachoma by 2020

The World Health Organisation has a global goal to eliminate trachoma by 2020. It is the world’s leading infectious cause of irreversible blindness. Australia remains the last developed country in the world where this disease still persists. It is prevalent in remote Indigenous communities where living standards are inadequate, where there is a lack of functional, maintained washing facilities, and where homes are chronically overcrowded. Current personal and community hygiene practices allow the frequent spreading of infected secretions from one child to another, and although trachoma is easily treated with antibiotics, it is the frequent recurrent infections that damage the eyelids and cause blindness.