Angelia Sanders (M.A. ’12) has worked for nearly two decades to stop diseases that afflict millions of people in the world’s poorest countries. For the last 10 years, she’s been associate director of the program fighting trachoma, an eye disease, for The Carter Center, the nonprofit founded by former President Jimmy and First Lady Rosalynn Carter. Here’s what Sanders does in her own words.
Former President Carter remembered his mom treating people for trachoma when he was growing up in Georgia. Since then, the United States has eliminated the disease, but more than 100 million people are still at risk, mostly in Africa.
Trachoma is a bacterial infection that causes your eyelids to turn inward and your eyelashes to scratch the cornea, which can lead to blindness if left untreated. It is spread by direct person-to- person contact, as well as flies and shared clothes or towels. Children ages 1 to 9 and women are most likely to contract it.
I work to stop the spread of this ancient disease and treat people who have it through interventions and health education. I collaborate with the health ministries in Sudan and South Sudan. We know the strategies that work – surgery to correct in-turned eyelashes, antibiotics to treat infection, access to clean water and adequate sanitation to stop the recurring cycle of transmission. As a result of country buy-in, strong partnerships and hard work, we’ve seen a 92% reduction in people impacted by trachoma in the past 20 years. However, 125 million people remain at risk.
(Photo courtesy of the Carter Center)
The reason we haven’t had more success is the lack of funds to do more and the lack of security preventing us from accessing certain areas. On one of my most recent trips, we planned to do an impact survey in a district in South Sudan. The night before, we got word that one tribe stole the cows from another tribe; there was shooting and people died. It changed everything.
Sometimes incidences of insecurity are really hard to see on the horizon. I have had colleagues who were severely injured or killed by violence. You constantly dread that text message. We’ve had some close calls. You just hope you get lucky, and you keep moving forward. Zithromax is this amazing drug that’s being provided to areas that have nothing. The fact that Pfizer is willing to donate hundreds of millions of doses every year is huge. If people have trachoma, it treats that infection. Zithro also has been shown to reduce respiratory infections and infant mortality.
We treat everyone in a district once a year with Zithromax. While I was in South Sudan, we completed research to look at whether we should change that to every six months. During that trip, I was also able to negotiate a partnership with another NGO (nongovernmental organization) to provide cataract and general eye care in the state of Eastern Equatoria. We’re expanding the footprint of where we work, and we’re trying to do more in the countries where we are already.
The rest of the time, I worked with the team to train people in how to go out and measure in a scientific way whether trachoma is still prevalent. In a typical year, I spend more than three months working in-country. Every time I go on these trips, I’m physically tired but emotionally recharged. The most gratifying part is seeing people better off than they were before.
Sanders recently ended a two-year term as chair of the International Coalition for Trachoma Control. The group consists of more than 50 nongovernmental organizations, academic institutions and philanthropists.
“I had my first entry into international development going to Kenya with the Peace Corps after my bachelor’s degree. It took the abstract of helping people and humanized it to actual relationships. I received my master’s degree in international studies from Old Dominion and my master’s and doctoral degrees in public health from the University of South Florida. The different degrees give me the big picture and the little picture. I can look at health programs and also understand the political and economic factors under which they operate."