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Monitoring the impact of a national school based deworming programme on soil-transmitted helminths in Kenya: the first three years, 2012 – 2014
- Source :
- Parasites & Vectors
- Publisher :
- Springer Nature
-
Abstract
- Background In 2012, the Kenyan Ministries of Health and of Education began a programme to deworm all school-age children living in areas at high risk of soil-transmitted helminths (STH) and schistosome infections. The impact of this school-based mass drug administration (MDA) programme in Kenya is monitored by the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) as part of a five-year (2012–2017) study. This article focuses on the impact of MDA on STH infections and presents the overall achieved reductions from baseline to mid-term, as well as yearly patterns of reductions and subsequent re-infections per school community. Methods The study involved a series of pre- and post-intervention, repeat cross-sectional surveys in a representative, stratified, two-stage sample of schools across Kenya. The programme contained two tiers of monitoring; a national baseline and mid-term survey including 200 schools, and surveys conducted among 60 schools pre- and post-intervention. Stool samples were collected from randomly selected school children and tested for helminth infections using Kato-Katz technique. The prevalence and mean intensity of each helminth species were calculated at the school and county levels and 95 % confidence intervals (CIs) were obtained by binomial and negative binomial regression, respectively, taking into account clustering by schools. Results The overall prevalence of STH infection at baseline was 32.3 % (hookworms: 15.4 %; Ascaris lumbricoides: 18.1 %; and Trichuris trichiura: 6.7 %). After two rounds of MDA, the overall prevalence of STH had reduced to 16.4 % (hookworms: 2.3 %; A. lumbricoides: 11.9 %; and T. trichiura: 4.5 %). The relative reductions of moderate to heavy intensity of infections were 33.7 % (STH combined), 77.3 % (hookworms) and 33.9 % (A. lumbricoides). For T. trichiura, however, moderate to heavy intensity of infections increased non-significantly by 18.0 % from baseline to mid-term survey. Conclusion The school-based deworming programme has substantially reduced STH infections, but because of ongoing transmission additional strategies may be required to achieve a sustained interruption of transmission. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13071-016-1679-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
- Subjects :
- Male
Veterinary medicine
medicine.medical_specialty
Kenya
Adolescent
Cross-sectional study
education
030231 tropical medicine
Helminthiasis
School-based deworming
Deworming
Soil
Young Adult
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Helminths
Environmental health
parasitic diseases
Prevalence
medicine
Animals
Humans
030212 general & internal medicine
Ascaris lumbricoides
Trichuris trichiura
Child
Mass drug administration
Anthelmintics
Schools
biology
business.industry
Research
medicine.disease
biology.organism_classification
Cross-Sectional Studies
Infectious Diseases
Hookworms
Child, Preschool
Tropical medicine
Female
Parasitology
business
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 17563305
- Volume :
- 9
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Parasites & Vectors
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....f66a01041e51f79ccd92f2e401927eb4
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1186/s13071-016-1679-y