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.