Abstract
Among Oceania's population of 35 million people, the greatest number living in poverty currently live in Papua New Guinea (PNG), Fiji, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands. These impoverished populations are at high risk for selected NTDs, including Necator americanus hookworm infection, strongyloidiasis, lymphatic filariasis (LF), balantidiasis, yaws, trachoma, leprosy, and scabies, in addition to outbreaks of dengue and other arboviral infections including Japanese encephalitis virus infection. PNG stands out for having the largest number of cases and highest prevalence for most of these NTDs. However, Australia's Aboriginal population also suffers from a range of significant NTDs. Through the Pacific Programme to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis, enormous strides have been made in eliminating LF in Oceania through programs of mass drug administration (MDA), although LF remains widespread in PNG. There are opportunities to scale up MDA for PNG's major NTDs, which could be accomplished through an integrated package that combines albendazole, ivermectin, diethylcarbamazine, and azithromycin, in a program of national control. Australia's Aboriginal population may benefit from appropriately integrated MDA into primary health care systems. Several emerging viral NTDs remain important threats to the region.
Highlights
The neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) represent the most common infections of the world’s poorest people, a group sometimes known as ‘‘the bottom billion’’ [1,2]
Proof of concept for achieving success in mass drug administration (MDA) in Oceania has been obtained through the PacELF with high
Lymphatic Filariasis (PacELF) has been demonstrated in Oceania, but enhanced efforts are still required in Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia
Summary
The neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) represent the most common infections of the world’s poorest people, a group sometimes known as ‘‘the bottom billion’’ [1,2]. These tropical infections trap people in poverty through their adverse effects on worker productivity, pregnancy outcomes, and child cognition and development [1,2]. Since 2008, efforts have been made to review and describe the differences in the etiologies, prevalence, and disease burden of the major NTDs according to their regional distribution [5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. Reference lists of identified articles and reviews were manually searched, as were databases from the WHO (http://www.who.int), including the Weekly Epidemiological Record
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