Richard Branson Announces $105-Million Fund for Eye Disease, Backed by Gates and Others

Richard Branson, the billionaire business magnate who founded the venture-capital network Virgin Group, has announced a joint fund of $105 million for a program working to end the blinding bacterial infection called trachoma.

The money comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation; the ELMA Foundation; the Department for International Development, of the British government; and Virgin Unite, Branson’s philanthropy.

Sightsavers, the nonprofit group that will lead the program, said it would support at least 10 African countries as they make plans to eliminate trachoma by 2023. The disease is rare in the United States, with fewer than 1,000 cases annually, but internationally it’s the leading infectious cause of blindness, with 165 million people affected in 2017, according to the World Health Organization.

“It is now within our grasp to be part of history and stop trachoma in its tracks,” said Caroline Harper, chief executive of Sightsavers. “This persistent disease blights the world’s poorest communities and traps people into lives of intense pain. It can turn eyelashes inwards so that with every blink they scrape against the ball of the eye, slowly and torturously turning people blind. Yet it is treatable and preventable.”

“Some of the most trusted names in modern philanthropy” have come together to make a “huge contribution,” she said.

‘Audacious Project’

The multimillion-dollar investment is part of a larger philanthropic collaborative called The Audacious Project, which hopes to fight various diseases and work on other global issues. The project has raised $441 million, with a goal of $634 million, according to its website. In addition, the Commonwealth 2018-2020 Fund, in Britain, supplied £20 million, or about $25.5 million, in April for trachoma research and treatment.

Branson announced the donations on Sunday at the Global Citizen Festival: Mandela 100, in Johannesburg. “We are also hoping,” he said in a statement, “that this will inspire other partners to join us to end trachoma and other neglected tropical diseases and to come together to collaborate at scale to tackle other unacceptable issues like this that are destroying people’s lives and slowing down economic growth opportunities that will lift people out of poverty.”

Branson’s announcement follows news of the creation of the International Trachoma Initiative by Pfizer, a major drugmaker, and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation. Others philanthropies working to end trachoma include the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, which has committed $20 million over 10 years.

Local Impact

Frontline health officials like Givemore Mafukidze, an ophthalmic nurse in Zimbabwe, are delivering the treatments, a news release said. His country, is one of those that will receive funding.

“When I see a child with trachoma, I know that at some point this condition could have been avoided,” Mafukidze said. “If this condition goes on, you know that at some point in time they may end up blind. When someone goes blind, it’s a burden to the family, to the community, to the nation.”

Other countries on the list to receive support are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tanzania.

In June, Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African country to eliminate trachoma, thanks to previous investments. Cambodia, Iran, Laos, Morocco, Mexico, Nepal, and Oman have also eliminated most trachoma cases.