René Le Berre, a French entomologist who helped inspire an international campaign that saved millions of West Africans from the parasitic disease river blindness, died Dec. 6 in L’Aiguillon-sur-Mer on France’s western coast. He was 78.

The cause was cardiovascular disease complicated by diabetes, said a former colleague, Dr. Joel G. Breman of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

Onchocerciasis, the formal name for river blindness, had once been a scourge in the fertile river basins of tropical Africa.

Transmitted when black flies living in rapidly running rivers bite a victim repeatedly, releasing parasitic worms into the body, the disease brings excruciating itching, creates nodules under the skin and often results in blindness. Victims can remain infected for 15 years.