New Group Formed to Fight Eye Ailment

The Pfizer pharmaceutical company has provided medication worth $60-million to fight a bacterial infection of the eye that afflicts more than 150 million people worldwide.

Pfizer is also providing $3-million in cash to battle trachoma, a disease that has blinded six million people in developing countries. The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation will also provide $3-million.

The Clark Foundation and the pharmaceutical company have formed a new non-profit organization known as the International Trachoma Initiative to administer a treatment program.

The effort is also receiving support from the William H. Gates Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.

The new effort will focus for two years on five countries where the disease is endemic: Morocco, Mali, Ghana, Tanzania, and Vietnam. If it is successful, it will expand to other countries in which the disease is prevalent.