Saving the World in Ethiopia: One Child at a Time

On NPR's All Things Considered, independent producer Jake Warga offers a profile of the person he admires most: his best friend, American health worker Jenafir House, MPH, MSW. House, a research coordinator for the Francis I. Proctor Foundation, based out of the University of California, San Francisco, heads a program in Ethiopia to eliminate trachoma, a blinding eye infection caused by Chlamydia trachomatis, through mass community-wide distribution of oral azithromycin. The Francis I. Proctor Foundation for Research in Ophthalmology is an internationally renowned, privately endowed Organized Research Unit at UCSF dedicated to research and training in infectious and inflammatory ocular diseases, and the application of this research to the prevention of blindness worldwide. It is recognized as the pre-eminent center in the world for this discipline. Photo/Jake Warga
Effect of a single mass antibiotic distribution on the prevalence of infectious trachoma Jaya D. Chidambaram, MBBS; Wondu Alemayehu, MD, MPH; Muluken Melese, MD, MPH; Takele Lakew, MD, MPH; Elizabeth Yi, BA; Jenafir House, MPH, MSW; Vicky Cevallos, MT; Zhaoxia Zhou, BS; Kathryn Maxey, MS; David C. Lee, BA; Brett L. Shapiro, BA; Muthiah Srinivasan, MBBS; Travis Porco, PhD, MPH; John P. Whitcher, MD, MPH; Bruce D. Gaynor, MD; Thomas M. Lietman, MD JAMA. 2006;205:1142-1146. Abstract | Full Text | Full Text (PDF)
Related Links: Saving the World in Ethiopia: One Child at a Time All Things Considered, NPR, January 30, 2007 The Francis I. Proctor Foundation for Research in Ophthalmology Trachoma Amelioration in Northern Amhara (TANA) ClinicalTrials.gov, U.S. National Institutes of Health