Treating the Hard to Reach - by River

Patient never learnt to ride a bicycle but his skills with a wooden pirogue are impressive. As if walking on the water, he balances perfectly, his paddle moving precisely through the slowly moving waters, propelling his small dugout canoe quietly forward. Today, he is assisting Eyanga Lonkonga - one of a small army of volunteer Community Drug Distributors – to travel between villages to conduct the annual round of treatment against two tropical diseases – which is supported by CBM and the END Fund.

There are no roads connecting Ngombe-Malala Village to Boende, the capital city in Tshuapa Province – just the river. Everything has to travel by boat to arrive in the isolated communities that live on the river margins - including the drugs for the Ministry of Health’s annual treatment campaign.

Reaching every one of these remote communities is a challenge, but if the treatment is to be effective, at least 80% of individuals need to take the drugs annually. In this way, transmission of river blindness and elephantiasis can gradually be reduced, and these disabling diseases can eventually be eliminated.

Eyanga Lonkonga is not paid for the long weeks he spends explaining the dangers of disease, measuring people and giving them accurate doses of medicine, but at the moment it is his only work. He says - 

CBM and END Fund recently provided boats and outboards to the Coordinator of the NTD Programme in these Provinces to assist with the organisation and supervision of the drug distribution.