Controlling intestinal helminths while eliminating lymphatic filariasis

Abstract

The Programme to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis (LF), launched in 1997, is a public-sector/private- sector partnership organized as a Global Alliance, with the World Health Organization serving as secretariat. Its principal purpose is to carry out the mandate of the 50th World Health Assembly (1997) to eliminate lymphatic filariasis as a public health problem worldwide, but its tools and strategies for achieving this end also have important additional public health benefits. Foremost among these are the effects the Programme can have on the control of intestinal helminth infections in treated populations, largely because of certain similarities, or overlaps, of the drugs and strategies used in the public health approaches to these parasitic infections. The principal health benefits from treating these intestinal helminth infections are reviewed in detail below, but in addition there might even be an entirely new justification for aggressive treatment and control of these infections if the recently described effects they have on potentiating HIV infections in affected populations can also be further substantiated and extended.