Clinical evaluation of the Taiwan trachoma control programme.

Following a clinical trial in 1959-60 and a prevalence survey in 1960-61, a community-wide trachoma treatment programme was instituted in Taiwan. A reexamination in 1968-69 of a subsample of the localities included in the 1960-61 survey provided the basis for a clinical evaluation of the programme.Except in areas of very high endemicity in 1960-61, trachoma appears to have ceased to be, or is in the process of ceasing to be, an important public health problem. A reduction in the number of cases that were active in 1960-61 has since resulted in reducing both the incidence and the severity of the disease. Cases showing signs of past experience of the disease (healed cases), as well as cases with grave irreversible sequelae or complications, belong to the pretreatment cohort and are moving along "time" without being replaced.In communities with an initially very high endemicity it is open to question whether the incidence of the disease has been reduced to the level at which it will fail to perpetuate itself. The results of a very limited survey conducted in 1970 are encouraging: a repeat sample survey is planned for 1972.