Seminar in Health Care Policy

Catalog description

Rider University is uniquely positioned through Global Studies to have access to the nongovernmental organization United Front against River Blindness (UFAR). It is an Africaninspired, U.S.-based nonprofit and tax exempt organization. Its primary mission has been to participate in partnerships with other global health organizations in the elimination of onchocerciasis (river blindness), as a major public health problem in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). UFAR was founded and registered in the U.S. in 2004 by Dr. Daniel Shungu, a former Merck & Co. Inc. employee, who is a Congolese by birth and a naturalized U.S. citizen. The U.S. office is in Lawrenceville, N.J. and the Congo office is in Kinshasa, DRC. Dr. Roberta Fiske-Rusciano of Rider University’s Global Studies faculty is a founding UFAR board member and has hosted Dr. Shungu several times in her course Global Perspectives on Health and Illness. For the past eleven years UFAR in partnership with several organizations (World Health Organization, Sightsavers Itl., Merck, DRC coalition group for onchocerciasis, and the DRC Health Minister, have successfully treated three million (as of 2015) Congolese with Ivermectin (Mectizan), donated by Merck and Co., Inc. Taken once a year for approximately ten years prevents infection of river blindness, by interrupting the cycle of the parasite. Because of UFAR’s continued success in its mission, it has been asked to expand its work to include more neglected tropical diseases, using the same method of health delivery system: communitydirected treatment with the appropriate medicament, e.g. Ivermectin. Now that treatments of other diseases have been added to UFAR’s mission (trachoma, lymphatic filariasis, shistosomiasis, guinea worm and helminthes infestations), additional medical treatments are scheduled to be added once these conditions are thoroughly mapped in the population.