The Disease Control Division of the Directorate General of Health Services under the Health Ministry recently organized a series of orientation meetings on Transmission Assessment Survey (TAS) in Rangpur, Kurigram, Nilphamari and Lalmonirhat districts. The objectives of these events were to orient school-teachers and health inspectors/assistants on TAS and to ensure their role for successful completion of TAS activities among the students in their respective schools. More than 400 participants including school teachers and health workers participated in these orientations where previous TAS results were disseminated and theory on transmission assessment survey, its activities and preparations discussed as per WHO guidelines.
Mass drug administration (MDA) is needed to reduce infection in the community to levels below a threshold at which mosquitoes are unable to continue spreading the parasites from person to person and new infections are prevented. WHO recommends TAS to determine when infections have been reduced below these target thresholds and MDA can stop. Once it has stopped, TAS is used as a surveillance tool to determine that infection levels are sustained below target thresholds.
Bangladesh was one of the highest burden countries for Lymphatic Filariasis (LF) at the beginning of the Global Programme to Eliminate LF (GPELF) with an estimated 70 million people at risk of infection. Though baseline mapping in 2000 found that 34 out of 64 districts in the country were endemic, only 19 districts required mass drug administration (MDA). The Bangladesh LF Program has successfully scaled up MDA in these districts, and is moving into the elimination phase using the WHO recommended guidelines for TAS.