The True Miracle of Ivermectin

MEDPAGE TODAY ^ | January 10, 2026 | Claire Panosian Dunavan, MD

[nickcarraway]

It's time to celebrate the drug's greatest global win

Last year, an inspiring milestone in global health went largely unnoticed in the U.S. How much do you want to bet it was even less on the radar of Americans who still think that ivermectin — a Nobel Prize-winning anti-parasitic drug — can vanquish COVID-19? Sadly, some of them are now embracing another baseless claim: namely, that ivermectin can help cure cancer.

Aye yi yi. Will certain people's willing suspension of disbelief never end?

But today, instead of angst-ing over dangers of modern "medical freedom," I'm focusing on something else. (Even though I do worry about the fact that Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Texas now allow ivermectin to be sold over the counter, and other states could soon follow.)

Anyway, remember that overlooked milestone I mentioned? It was last year's celebration of 5 billion (count them!) doses of ivermectin donated over 38 years to global programs meant to defeat two scourges afflicting some of the world's poorest people. Here are sketches of those long-neglected diseases that — with sufficient investment and political will — can finally be quashed by periodic treatment with ivermectin and other parasite-fighting drugs.

The Promise of Mass Drug Administration

Let's start with onchocerciasis, commonly called river blindness. This helminthic disease is transmitted to humans by black flies that breed in fast-flowing water. Over years, adult Onchocerca volvulus worms coil and mate in subcutaneous nodules, while thousands of their larval offspring migrate daily from the nodules into skin. The human immune response to these larvae is especially damaging to the eyes and dermis. As a result, onchocerciasis sometimes causes lichenified skin and horrific itching as well as a progressive loss of sight.

Thankfully, mass administration programs launched in the late 1980s, which distribute ivermectin to at-risk populations either once or twice a year, have already prevented blindness in at least 600,000 people both in Africa, the nematode's original home, and the Americas, where the parasite was brought by the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Then, there's Lymphatic filariasis (LF). LF is a disease caused by a mosquito-borne nematode more broadly distributed in 72 countries in Asia, Africa, the Western Pacific, and parts of the Caribbean and South America. Because adult worms live in lymphatics, LF's clinical hallmark is elephantiasis — a sometimes-grotesque, always-disfiguring condition that typically affects lower limbs and genitalia but can also maim arms and breasts. Many people who either have or risk acquiring LF now receive periodic cocktails of anti-parasitic drugs that include ivermectin and albendazole (Albenza) with or without an older agent called diethylcarbamazine (DEC).

Corporate philanthropy by pharmaceutical giants deserves much of the credit for jump-starting these global preventive campaigns. Starting in 1987, Merck Sharp & Dohme began to freely donate ivermectin (Mectizan) to fight river blindness and later LF, and will continue to do so until the drug is no longer needed. In 1998, the company that is now GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) started giving albendazole to the World Health Organization (WHO) to further aid in combating LF.

Finally, in 2017, the Japanese pharmaceutical company Eisai began donating DEC to the LF effort. Nonetheless, both for river blindness and LF, mass treatment with donated medicines also requires broad public-private partnerships and the concerted efforts of many individuals, ranging from scientific and clinical experts to officials in national ministries of health and front-line health workers.

Thanks to their shared commitment, there is now genuine hope for something unimagined when I first studied tropical medicine: the eventual eradication of two ancient torments that, as far as I can tell, are never mentioned by our latest lot of ivermectin fans and profiteers.

A True Parasite Warrior

One of the things I love about my field is my colleagues' passion to help fellow humans who — through no fault of their own — suffer disability and pain stemming from endemic poverty and disease.

One such colleague is Frank Richards, Jr., MD, who is both a noted expert in vector-borne parasites and partly descended from slaves taken from Nigeria, an original heartland of river blindness. Richards first encountered the disease during a 5-year deployment to Guatemala while working for the CDC. After 18 additional years with the agency, he then spent nearly 20 years with The Carter Center's river blindness, lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis, and malaria programs.

Richards has received numerous honors for his work, most recently the Mectizan Award he accepted last November in Bogota, Colombia for his many contributions to the near-eradication of river blindness in the Americas. Between 2013 and 2017, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Mexico won their battles, which leaves the Yanomami territory on the Brazil and Venezuela border as the parasite's final Latin American outpost. Last year, another of Richards's long-cherished dreams started to come true when Niger became the first African nation to eradicate river blindness. Today, several other African countries are also nearing success.

Coda

Who could possibly disagree that visual art can't touch us and keep us mindful of global suffering?

One image forever burned in my mind is "The Vulture and the Little Girl," a photo of a starving Sudanese child that the New York Times published more than 30 years ago. "Sightless Among Miracles," a sculpture of a blind African man being led by a boy with a stick, is just as powerful.

What this sculpture depicts was an everyday reality not long ago for certain people living in countries where river blindness thrived. Today, the life-sized work can be found in several places, including the grounds of the WHO in Geneva, The Carter Center in Atlanta, the World Bank in Washington, and the headquarters of Merck in Rahway, New Jersey. And there it should always remain, not just to celebrate a miraculous drug but to remind us to never stop trying to lessen burdens of the global poor.

Having said that, isn't it ironic that ivermectin — a drug of such value to some who have close to nothing — is now being used for all the wrong reasons by others blessed with so much more?

[no-to-illegals]

You shall be in my prayers, FRiend.

[null and void]

Thanks!

[fidelis]

Thank you!

[SisterK]

thank you....I have been taking the injectable (but orally) and the paste is much less expensive and easier to find

[SisterK]

though they are amazed at his progress, they haven’t asked what he was taking

sort of makes you wonder if they are in the business to make a difference and heal people
or to buy a new yacht

[Texan4Life]

From the CATO Institute - Spring 2026

Reconsidering Ivermectin

Despite a skeptical Cochrane review, the antiparasitic is still a valuable tool for combating COVID.

https://www.cato.org/regulation/spring-2026/reconsidering-ivermectin