Trachoma elimination in Africa: Lessons from two multi-country initiatives

In 2014, The Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) initiated two ambitious five-year programmes to tackle trachoma across ten countries in Africa.

With a total budget of £80 million, the two initiatives aimed to make significant progress towards, or achieve elimination of, trachoma as a public health problem in the selected countries. Working with the support of members of the International Coalition for Trachoma Control (ICTC), these two programmes have supported the effective delivery of the SAFE strategy on an unprecedented scale. The results achieved have built upon the significant steps taken towards global elimination of trachoma in the past two decades.

As these two programmes come to their close in 2019, an end-of-programme evaluative learning exercise was commissioned. The aim of this learning exercise was to generate strategic learning to contribute to available evidence about trachoma elimination, neglected tropical disease strategy and programming, and the broader health sector. The learning exercise particularly sought to advance understanding in areas where there are gaps in knowledge, with the hope of informing global strategies to achieve the elimination of trachoma.

Publication date: May 2019

View the report in French (pdf)

View the report in Portuguese (pdf)