Health Ministry begins new push to eliminate Filaria in Regions Three and Four

With Lymphatic Filariasis, commonly called “Big Foot,” eliminated in eight of the 10 Administrative Regions, the Ministry of Health is now on a mission to achieve nationwide elimination, targeting Regions Three and Four.

On Friday, the Ministry of Health launched its Lymphatic Filariasis Elimination Campaign 2024 at the Caramel Secondary School under the theme “We share because we care! Take your pills.”

To eliminate the transmission of filaria, which is transmitted through the bite of an infected Culex mosquito, and causes swelling to the arms and legs and other parts of the body, the Ministry of Health will be administering a triple drug therapy IDA (Ivermectin, Diethylcarbamazine, and Albendazole).

Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony said the focus this time around will be on Regions Three and Four.

“We have 10 regions but right now because of previous efforts, in eight of those regions we can safely say that we have eliminated filaria from eight of those regions, and that’s an achievement. When we did the last epidemiological monitoring survey, what we found, because we set a cut off point, that the positivity rate should be about 1% and anything above that 1% then we would want to go back and make sure that we reduce it. And so, when we did that survey, we found that in Region 3 and Region 4, that we are a little bit above that 1%.”

He said out of an abundance of caution, and based on the advice of the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), the Health Ministry thought it fitting to execute another round of Mass Drug Administration (MDA).

Approximately 700 pill distributors have been spread across the two regions. Minister Anthony urged them to do their best in getting people to take the pills.

“We want you to make sure that you reach as many persons as possible. We are spending a lot of money on this, both ourselves and PAHO, who has been generous in giving us a lot of resources to do this. So, this investment that we are making, we want to make sure that we go out there and do our best. We have to walk every house, every street, and we have to talk to people and if they don’t understand the rationale, we must spend some time to explain to them,” Minister Anthony said.

Coordinator of the Lymphatic Filariasis Elimination Campaign, Dr Annastacia Sampson explained that in 2001, one year after the launch of the Global Programme to eliminate Lymphatic Filaria as a public health problem, the Ministry of Health embarked on a school-based mapping survey in all 10 regions, and it was found that with the exception of Region One, all other regions were either partially endemic or endemic.

Dr Sampson said the fact that children were testing positive for filaria, meant then that adults were also positive, and as such the Health Ministry introduced DEC salt targeting all the endemic regions.

However, that initiative was not as effective as was expected and in 2014 Guyana scaled up its elimination effort by implementing MDA using the double drug strategy (dietycarbamazine and Albendazole).

“With the double drug therapy Guyana needed to achieve 5 consecutive, successful years of implementation, achieving a 65% or more epidemiological coverage. Despite its effectiveness, MDA strategy depends on epidemiological coverage, which is defined as the proportion of the total population ingesting the medicine during the MDA. The MDA-DA intervention targeted the highly endemic regions, namely Regions 3, 4, 5 and 10. Prior to 2017, Region 5 was the only region to consistently surpass the minimum threshold of 65% coverage. In 2017 and 2018, all the highly endemic regions surpassed the minimum threshold coverage with regions 3 and 4 achieving 73%, 91% and 85% and 89% respectively,” she explained.

However, in 2019 the Health Ministry introduced the use of the triple therapy IDA in another attempt to interrupt the transmission of the disease.

Dr Sampon said during this round of drug administration, the 700 pill distributors will be administering the triple therapy IDA in schools, work places and in communities.

The campaigned was endorsed by PAHO Representative, Daniel Albrecht and Opposition Member, Dr Karen Cummings – a former Health Minister, and other health officials and local leaders.