Abstract
More Progress in Eliminating Transmission of Onchocerca volvulus and Wuchereria bancrofti in the Americas: A Portent of Global Eradication.
Highlights
Can these challenges to onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis elimination be overcome, and are there lessons from successful elimination efforts that can help us understand how to achieve elimination of disease and permanent cessation of transmission of O. volvulus and lymphatic filariae at a global level? Two articles in this issue of the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene describe elimination of transmission of onchocerciasis in an area of Guatemala[6] and bancroftian filariasis in an urban area of the Dominican Republic.[7]
Among the increasing number of “neglected tropical diseases” that have been identified to disproportionately affect the health and socioeconomic status of impoverished populations of the world, onchocerciasis, caused by the filarial nematode Onchocerca volvulus, and lymphatic filariasis, caused mainly by Wuchereria bancrofti, share biological and ecological features that make them feasible targets of elimination as public health problems and, global eradication, defined as the cessation of transmission in all endemic areas in the absence of continuing public health interventions
Interventions designed to interrupt transmission of onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis are based on reducing the reservoir of microfilariae in the community below a threshold level that no longer sustains transmission by local vectors
Summary
Can these challenges to onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis elimination be overcome, and are there lessons from successful elimination efforts that can help us understand how to achieve elimination of disease and permanent cessation of transmission of O. volvulus and lymphatic filariae at a global level? Two articles in this issue of the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene describe elimination of transmission of onchocerciasis in an area of Guatemala[6] and bancroftian filariasis in an urban area of the Dominican Republic.[7].
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