What should you do when a disease outbreak puts seven million of your citizens at risk of blindness? That’s a question the Malawian government faced in 2008 when 17 out of 28 districts were threatened by trachoma.
Malawi’s answer was a national trachoma programme launched in 2011 to stop one of the world’s most common neglected tropical diseases (NTD).
The result? The World Health Organisation (WHO) has certified Malawi as one of only 14 countries in the world to have eliminated trachoma.
It took 11 years to fully materialise, but the result is what you get when you plan and work.