Mass drug administration significantly reduces infection of Schistosoma mansoni and hookworm in school children in the national control program in Sierra Leone

Hodges, Mary H, Dada, Nsa, Warmsley, Anna, Paye, Jusufu, Bangura, Momodu M, Nyorkor, Emanuel, Sonnie, Mustapha and Zhang, Yaobi (2012) 'Mass drug administration significantly reduces infection of Schistosoma mansoni and hookworm in school children in the national control program in Sierra Leone'. BMC Infectious Diseases, Vol 12, e16.

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Abstract

Background

The first-ever round of school-based mass drug administration (MDA) with praziquantel together with mebendazole targeting school-aged children in endemic districts was conducted in 2009 by the National Neglected Tropical Diseases Control Program. To evaluate the impact of the treatment regimen, a cross-sectional sentinel site survey was conducted 6 months post-MDA.

Methods

Fifteen sentinel schools from six highly endemic districts (according to data from national and pre-MDA surveys) with Schistosoma mansoni affecting over 50% of the population, and moderate to high prevalence of hookworms (> 20%). Approximately 30 children aged 9-14 years were selected from each school and stool samples (one per student) were examined by the Kato-Katz method.

Results

The overall prevalence (and intensity) in these sentinel sites pre-MDA of S. mansoni was 69.0% (170.8 epg), hookworm: 41.7% (71.7 epg), Ascaris lumbricoides: 1.8% and Trichuris trichiura: 3.8%. Six months post MDA, the findings were S. mansoni: 38.2% (47.3 epg) and hookworm: 14.5% (8.7 epg), representing a reduction from pre-MDA levels of 44.6% (65.2%) and 72.3% (87.9%) respectively. The proportion of children who were moderately or heavily infected with S. mansoni fell from 35.6% pre MDA to 9.9% post MDA.

Conclusions

Significant reduction in S. mansoni and hookworm infection was achieved by this first round MDA in school-going children in Sierra Leone. This reduction in infection burden can potentially contribute to a reduction of morbidity, such as anaemia, in these children.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/12/16
Subjects:	QX Parasitology > Helminths. Annelida > QX 355 Schistosoma WA Public Health > Preventive Medicine > WA 110 Prevention and control of communicable diseases. Transmission of infectious diseases WA Public Health > Health Problems of Special Population Groups > WA 395 Health in developing countries WC Communicable Diseases > Tropical and Parasitic Diseases > WC 890 Hookworm infections (General)
Faculty: Department:	Groups (2002 - 2012) > Clinical Group
Digital Object Identifer (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2334-12-16
Depositing User:	Lynn Roberts-Maloney
Date Deposited:	15 Jan 2015 11:27
Last Modified:	06 Feb 2018 13:08
URI:	https://archive.lstmed.ac.uk/id/eprint/4735

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