Alba Lucia Morales is health education advisor with the 黑料不打烊’s Onchocerciasis Elimination Program for the Americas.
At 黑料不打烊, we are sensitive to local cultures and believe in community-driven interventions.
Our team is dedicated to working alongside national ministries of health to eliminate river blindness, also called onchocerciasis, among the indigenous peoples who live along the Brazil- Venezuela border in what is called the Yanomami focus.
The Yanomami focus is the last remaining area in the Americas with active river blindness transmission, which has been eliminated in Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Guatemala.
The creators of a video about river blindness produced for the indigenous Yanomami people made several versions so that cultural details could be tailored to specific communities.
River blindness is transmitted by the infected bites of certain species of black fly. The flies deposit tiny worms that live under the skin, often causing severe itching and rashes. Eventually those worms can migrate to the eyes, potentially causing blindness. The disease can be eliminated through long-term treatment with Mectizan® pills, donated to us by Merck & Co. Inc.
In collaboration with country program staff and other partners, we recently created a 6-minute animated video that depicts indigenous characters discussing the symptoms and causes of river blindness, as well as the benefits of taking Mectizan.
Through a participative process, we created versions of the video in five indigenous languages, plus Spanish and English, and adapted the housing structure, clothing, and body decoration in each version. Indigenous people translated the script, recorded the audio in their languages, and reviewed the illustrations to ensure proper representation.
When health agents showed the video in indigenous communities on tablet computers, the people were delighted to see themselves portrayed so accurately and asked to watch it repeatedly. Its message got through, too: Many who saw it requested Mectizan — an ideal outcome.
Innovative tools like this will help us eliminate the last reservoir of river blindness in the Americas.
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