Newsletter — "Action Against Worms"
The Preventive Chemothery and Transmission Control (PCT) unit will publish 3—4 issues of 'Action Against Worms' each year. Each issue will focus on a specific subject.
Filarial parasites that cause lymphatic filariasis are found in more than 80 countries around the world. This puts more than one billion people at risk.
Through intense social mobilization, World Health Organization (WHO) aims to provide drug treatment to all people within an endemic area or region at risk of the disease to ensure the elimination of this age-old scourge.
This issue is about Dracunculiasis, also known as guinea-worm disease, which could soon become the second disease to be eradicated. The disease known to have affected millions throughout history is now endemic in only 6 countries in Africa.
From a high of 3.5 million cases in the 1980s, it dwindled to 4619 cases in 2008.
This special issue on Madagascar highlights the country's achievement in implementing control measures to treat more than a million school children from schistosomiasis.
The disease is highly endemic in Madagascar.
This issue is about the tools for use in the diagnosis and treatment of lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, soil-transmitted helminthiasis and trachoma through preventive chemotherapy.
The use of dose poles further simplifies the treatment with azithromycin, ivermectin and praziquantel. Diethylcarbamazine (DEC) is still given on a weight basis.
This issue is about fascioliasis, one of the most neglected tropical diseases, which however represents a significant public health problem in many parts of the world.
It is now possible for endemic countries to receive donated drugs to treat this disease through WHO.
With this issue, Action Against Worms is expanding its remit to include three
more diseases: lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis and trachoma. Packaged together,
these fi ve diseases share characteristics that allow their previously independent and
large-scale preventive chemotherapy programmes to be synchronized and integrated.