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Survey ongoing to determine if Guyana is Filaria-free – Health Minister
Kaieteur News – The Ministry of Health has started a survey to determine if Guyana is free of the Filaria disease. This was disclosed by the Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, during his COVID-19 update on Thursday. However, this survey comes months after Guyana completed its second round of the Mass Drug Administration distribution exercise.
Dr. Anthony explained that if intake was optimal, the country stood a chance to finally eliminate the disease from Guyana for good.
Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony
“Filaria elimination, it’s a process, so we were required to do the Mass Drug Administration and we have completed those two cycles in the endemic areas for Filaria.
“Having completed that, now to ensure that we don’t have Filaria we now have to go back to those communities, take samples of people, and do certain tests to see whether or not the parasites still remain in the population,” he said.
Minister Anthony pointed out that a similar survey will occur during next year, and that the data gathered from these surveys will be used by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to analyse the status of Filaria in this country. The programme started in Guyana since October 2019.
“[So] currently we are engaged in doing those testing. So we have teams going out to the regions where we have done mass drug administration and once that is completed and the results are known, based on those results then the WHO would use it to make a decision on whether or not they can declare us to be Filaria free,” said the minister.
Meanwhile, the final distribution exercise in the Mass Drug Administration (MDA) programme for the Filaria pill was in February 2020.
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