At the RC Glenferrie weekly meeting, we were honoured to have Sandi Fulcher, the Project Administration Coordinator from EndTrachoma, talk about trachoma and Rotary’s efforts to end it. Sandi is a Rotary gem with a history of many roles within our District.
The aim of EndTrachoma is to prevent infectious diseases, like trachoma, by enabling communities to practice good hygiene. She pointed out that there are 1.9 million cases in the world, but Australia is the only high-income country where trachoma still remains endemic.
 PP Mark Ellis, Sandi Fulcher & President Mark Howlett |  |
The vector is not flies but basically poor hygiene and a lack of water. So, Rotary’s Australia-wide project has steadily installed 8,000 mirrors, over 10,000 towels, five water tanks and 6,000 toiletry kits to help stop the spread of this disease. The project has slowly spread its influence to stamp out high numbers in the Alice Springs area. It is continuing its work in W.A. to reduce the numbers in the Goldfields area, in particular.
We can help by making toiletry kits for an allocated pre-school, and by simply collecting used stamps. The used stamps collected in the last 6 years has raised over $52,000 and paid for a mobile washer-dryer trailer that visits trachoma-affected communities in W.A.
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