Science/Medicine : Help for ‘River Blindness’

Merck Pharmaceuticals has developed a drug that it says can fight “river blindness,” a scourge of the Third World. Company chairman P. Roy Vagelos said the company will provide the drug free to health organizations in developing countries.

The drug, Mectizan, has been approved for use by the French Directorate of Pharmacy and Drugs to treat onchocerciasis, or river blindness, a disease that affects an estimated 18 million people in Africa, the Middle East and Central and South America. It has made an estimated 340,000 people blind, Merck said. The disease is transmitted by the bite of the black fly which breeds in rivers.

Halfdan Mahler, director general of the World Health Organization, said widespread trials of the new drug will be made in West and Central Africa and in Central America. He said more information is needed about the effects of the drug on certain groups, including pregnant women and children under 12 years of age.