A tribute to Robert S. McNamara and his contribution to onchocerciasis control
The African river blindness (onchocerciasis) control community learned with great sadness of the death of Robert McNamara in July 2009.
As a former President of the World Bank, Robert McNamara initiated the onchocerciasis control programme (OCP) in West Africa. During a 1972 visit to Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) and Mali, World Bank President Robert McNamara saw broken villages and fallow fields, a then-common feature of regions with endemic river blindness.
He also saw chains of blind people led by small boys whose vision had not yet been extinguished by the scourge. After meeting scientific experts, he was quickly convinced that it was technically possible to control the disease. It was estimated such a program would cost US$120 million over 20 years at the 1973 exchange rate.
About a month after his West African visit, McNamara convened a meeting in London with counterparts from WHO, UNDP and FAO. Together they all agreed to jointly sponsor the program and form its steering committee. Annual meetings would assemble the governing body, to be composed of all donors, participating countries, and the four UN-family sponsors.
His efforts to raise funds for control of the disease led to one of the World’s most successful public health control programmes against a vector-borne disease and helped lay the foundations for the broader efforts now taking place in partnership with the World Health Organisation to eliminate other preventable yet neglected tropical diseases. These diseases were largely neglected because they affected poor, end of the road communities rather than people in better off, more developed countries.
“Nothing like that had ever been done before,” McNamara later recalled. “We (the four UN agencies) brought together a group of interested parties—both the nations of the infected areas and potential donors. It was a very tight organization. It never did develop a big bureaucracy, and we were able to get the commitments for long-term financial support from various governments.”
Robert McNamara showed a strong desire to address the problems confronting people suffering from poverty, as manifested by his role in establishing the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research that contributed significantly to the green revolution in predominantly developing countries as well as through river blindness control. Mr McNamara is credited for having coined and defined the phrase “absolute poverty” during a speech in Nairobi Kenya in 1973 in which he expressed his concerns for more equitable distribution of wealth, and in his capacity as a highly respected economist has a long history at the World Bank of addressing economic issues affecting especially the rural poor, in addition to his activities related to soliciting donor funds for onchocerciasis control.
The APOC and former OCP community, now in 30 countries of sub-Saharan Africa and with links around the World, share Mr McNamara’s desire to help alleviate poverty and suffering, especially among the “end of the road” communities that are not adequately served by overstretched Government services and infrastructure and which receive an inequitable share of the World’s resources. In this respect, we are linked in a visible way through the bronze statues of a blind man being led by a child, one of which stands at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, another being at the WHO headquarters in Geneva, a third in a public area of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, in which country the headquarters of OCP and APOC are situated, and a fourth with the Mectizan Donation Programme in Atlanta. These statues have become symbols for the highly successful public-private partnership that resulted from Robert McNamara’s efforts to rid the World of the debilitating disease that shocked him on his visit to West Africa in the 1970s and will always be associated with his memory.
The Director and staff of APOC and the entire onchocerciasis control community send their heartfelt condolences to the family of Mr McNamara and trust that they find solace through their awareness of his humanitarian contributions.