Pfizer gives free cure for blindness

PFIZER has given a major boost to a UN campaign to eradicate an eye infection that causes blindness, by providing a free antibiotic to treat the 150 million people afflicted.

The UN said the move would enable them to achieve the goal set by the World Health Organisation to eliminate trachoma-related blindness by 2020.

Over the last five years, the pharmaceutical giant has provided eight million doses of the antibiotic Zithromax to the International Trachoma Initiative to treat sufferers in nine impoverished countries in Africa and Asia.

Hank McKinnell, Pfizer's chairman and chief executive officer, told a news conference that the initial programme had been so successful that Pfizer would donate 135 million additional doses of Zithromax which he called "the gold standard for fighting trachoma" over the next five years.

"That represents a 15-fold increase and the largest donation of a patented medicine in history," he said.

Zithromax is an antibiotic that is used primarily to treat respiratory tract infections in children. It has over £1.3 billion in worldwide sales annually, McKinnell said.

McKinnell refused to put an estimate on the value of the 135 million additional doses, saying "preserving someone's sight is priceless." But another Pfizer executive said it ran into "many hundreds of millions" of dollars.

Serge Reznikoff of the World Health Organisation called the Pfizer announcement "very exciting and promising." Over the past century, trachoma was eliminated in many countries, including virtually all of the Americas, Europe and Australia.

But it is still prevalent in 48 countries in the poorest parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America where clean water and sanitation are scarce.

Trachoma is caused by the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis which can be spread easily by hands, clothing, or flies that have come into contact with discharges from the eyes or nose of an infected person. Over time, it results in turned-in eyelashes which then scratch and scar the cornea, leading to blindness if not treated.