DOH to conduct mass treatment of filariasis

The Department of Health will be conducting a mass treatment of lymphatic filariasis in communities and schools in accordance with the observance of the Filariasis Treatment Month.

With the issuance of an order coming from the office of the Malacañang, DOH is assigned lead agency in the conduct of the mass treatment where they will be using a combination of Diethylcarbamazine citrate and Albendazole as its main strategy for the elimination of filariasis in the community.

Lymphatic filariasis is a debilitating and disfiguring disease affecting about seventy-six percent of those living in 4th to 6th-class municipalities in the country.

Rarely life-threatening, lymphatic filariasis causes widespread and chronic suffering, disability, and social stigma. It can lead to grotesquely swollen limbs - a condition known as elephantiasis.

The ailment is endemic in over 80 countries in Africa, Asia, South and Central America and the Pacific Islands. More than 40 percent of all infected people live in India and one-third live in Africa, reports said. Parasitic nematode worms of the Filariidae family cause the disease. Three species are of significance - Wuchereria bancrofti, Brugia malayi and Brugia timori.

The bite of blood-feeding female mosquitoes that transmit immature larval forms of the parasitic worms from human to human causes the ailment.

W. bancrofti parasites are mainly transmitted by Culex quinquefasciatus mosquitoes and some species of Anopheles. Brugia parasites are mainly transmitted by Mansonia mosquitoes. In humans, adult worms can live for many years, producing large numbers of larval forms (known as microfilariae) which circulate in the lymphatics and blood where they can be ingested by blood-feeding mosquitoes, so completing the transmission cycle. Lymphatic filariasis patients used to observe a 12-day treatment regimen using the drug diethylcarbamazine (DEC), but medical breakthroughs have proven that a single dose of DEC is equally effective. Ivermectin has also been registered for treatment of filariasis, and albendazole was shown to have additional anti-filarial effects.

The treatment strategy is now based on annual, single-dose, two-drug regimens of ivermectin plus albendazole in countries that are co-endemic for onchocerciasis, and of DEC plus albendazole in all other countries.

Other government agencies will also be implementing the said order such as the Department of Interior and Local Government, Department of Education, Department of Social Welfare and Development, Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Philippine Information Agency.

With DOH as the providing agency for technical assistance and the necessary mass treatment, drugs and other logistics, the role of the LGUs is to assist in the supervision and monitoring of filariasis to ensure that there is a high mass treatment in all affected communities. - Jasmin R. Uy/MEEV