Eliminating onchocerciasis as a public health problem: the beginning of the end.

Onchocerciasis is one of the diseases targeted by Vision 2020. It is the world's second leading infectious cause of blindness, responsible for at least one million blind or severely visually disabled people. The Onchocerciasis Control Programme (OCP) in sub-Saharan Africa will be closed down in 2002, after 27 years of operation. This is the clearest indication that the prospects of eliminating onchocerciasis as a public health problem may be achieved by the end of this decade. The programme's potential now is to serve as a model of global and multiple partnership, to address other poverty related, serious and intractable problems such as needless blindness in the world.