Eye Protection: Antibiotic knocks back blinding disease

Medicating an entire village twice a year can hamper a scourge that has blinded millions of people in developing countries, a study in Ethiopia shows.

MEDICATE MANY. In Ethiopia’s Gurage region (shaded), treating villagers en masse with antibiotics reduced the occurrence of trachoma. Cartesia/S. Norcross

The bacterial eye disease trachoma was wiped out in the United States and much of the industrialized world around the mid-20th century, thanks to improved hygiene, sanitation, and antibiotics.