The Fight to Eradicate Noma

One evening before school started in fall 1994, German teacher Ute Winkler-Stumpf switched on the television. Staring at her from the screen was a teenage boy with a face almost obliterated by disease. She was shocked beyond words to learn about noma, or cancrum oris, a bacterial infection prolific in 53 countries around the world. Noma is the result of poor hygiene, malnutrition, and poverty and quickly kills most of its child victims. The survivors have horrendous facial disfigurements.

Winkler-Stumpf was determined to help. Within months, she had founded the Noma Trust. By spring 1995, the first two children had been flown from Niger, Africa, to Germany for plastic surgery. Since then, she has organized and financed medical treatment in Europe for 70 severely disfigured children from Niger, built a noma hospital in the capital, Niamey, provided children's houses in other regions of Niger, trained medical staff there, and found international medical volunteers willing to fly in and assist with the surgery. Thanks to her nationwide awareness campaign, parents are bringing their children in early enough for a life-saving penicillin jab.

"My aim is to eradicate the disease in Niger by 2005," she said. "Then we will start in Nigeria."

For more information, see the Noma Trust.

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