African Program for Onchocerciasis Control

GiveWell aims to find the best giving opportunities we can and recommend them to donors (why we recommend so few charities). We tend to put a lot of investigation into the organizations we find most promising, and de-prioritize others based on limited information. When we decide not to prioritize an organization, we try to create a brief writeup of our thoughts on that charity because we want to be as transparent as possible about our reasoning.

The following write-up should be viewed in this context: it explains why we determined that (for the time being), we won't be prioritizing the organization in question as a potential top charity. This write-up should not be taken as a "negative rating" of the charity. Rather, it is our attempt to be as clear as possible about the process by which we came to our top recommendations.

Published: October 2012

APOC

The African Program for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC) (http://www.who.int/blindness/partnerships/APOC/en/) supports programs which seek to control and eliminate onchocerciasis in Africa.

We spoke with representatives from APOC in April and May 2012.1 At that time, representatives told us that APOC was shifting its priorities from onchocerciasis control to elimination and formulating a budget and plan to utilize additional funding.2

We have told APOC that we will revisit our investigation when it has a more concrete funding gap, and have asked representatives to contact us when this is the case.

We previously considered APOC: 2009 review.

Sources

  • 1
    • GiveWell, "Notes from Phone Conversation with the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC) (April 30, 2012)."
    • GiveWell, "Notes from Phone Conversation with Donald Bundy, World Bank APOC Coordinator and Bilkiss Dhomun, World Bank APOC Financial Analyst (May 1, 2012)."

  • 2

    "From now through 2015, there's a gap because you need to do more if you want to achieve elimination. There are two gaps: a gap to intensify activities needed for elimination through 2015, plus what we'll need to continue through 2025. So, because of the stepping up of activities, there's a funding gap." GiveWell, "Notes from Phone Conversation with the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC) (April 30, 2012)."