Global progress towards trachoma elimination continues, WHO reports

The number of people requiring interventions against trachoma, the world's leading infectious cause of blindness, has fallen over the last year from 103 million in April 2025 to 92 million in March 2026, the World Health Organization (WHO) has reported in its Weekly Epidemiological Record.

The latest trachoma progress update presents data submitted by health ministries to WHO on implementation of the WHO-endorsed SAFE strategy (Surgery, Antibiotics, Facial cleanliness and Environmental improvement) in trachoma-endemic countries during 2025.

The update highlights several major milestones, including six countries being validated by WHO as having eliminated trachoma as a public health problem since the previous report in July 2025. They are Fiji (October 2025), Egypt (November 2025), Libya (February 2026), Algeria (April 2026), Australia (May 2026), Tunisia (May 2026), and El Salvador (July 2026), bringing the total number of countries validated to date to 32.