Transcript
LEN TARIVONDA: This campaign started around the year 2000 and of course it is a global campaign to eliminate filariasis. The Vanuatu government committed to it and I think there are probably a number of things that have led to the success. One is the political commitment at the highest level, at government and also at the level of the Ministry of Health, basically committing to this global campaign. Also there's been generous donations from pharmaceutical companies that have supported us and also technical and financial assistance from our development partners. Such as the governments of Australia and Japan, Korea, the United Kingdom, United States and a few other organisations, including non-governmental organisations and academic institutions and even philanthropic organisations. What I am trying to say is that everybody was in this together. Over a five year period, basically we had this campaign in the country where everybody had to take these two tablets. It was an MDA campaign or Mass Drug Administration campaign. They have to take them over the period of about five years. It was hard at the beginning but I think as the number of years where they had to take the medicines annually went down, people came to understand that this is much more than taking the medicines. It is really, I guess it is a journey towards making public health history. So a number of factors as, I have said Dominic, that has gone into this campaign and eventually this year, the announcement came about the elimination but maybe some of the things I have mentioned, were some of the critical factors or strategies that led to this successful campaign.
DOMINIC GODFREY: So you were talking about this five year period of this mass drug administration, how long was the administration for each person? How long was the prescription period for each person?
LT: There were two tablets that were used and they were just taken once but you have to take it annually. Everybody has to take it this year and next year and after next year, after a period of five years, but it is just taken once but two different tablets to counteract this lymphatic filariasis. Also an important strategy of the campaign was we had to make sure that the uptake rate was very, very high.
DG: And is this a prophylactic medicine or is it a treatment medicine?
LG: This was really like a treatment as well as a prophylactic. If somebody had filariasis once in the blood, because they are not showing any signs of symptoms, it would actually treat those parasites from spreading to other people because it is a mosquito-borne disease isn't it? So the idea of the annual rounds of the MDA by getting the whole population, it does two things. It treats whoever have this, they call it microfilariae, small tiny ones in the blood, it treats this one and of course it stops the infection from spreading to others. The fact that we have actually achieved this success, it doesn't necessarily mean that the job is all done and we forget about it because we need to continually sort of detect and prevent any future return of the disease. Elimination is not eradication.
DG: At this stage, are people in Vanuatu still having to be medicated annually?
LG: No the programme has stopped. It went on, like I said, for five years, like an annual MDA or Mass Drug Administration. The campaign was 2000 to 2005, but then it took 10 years to verify and validate that there was no new cases and the disease was under control and 10 years later we could do the announcement.
DG: So what are the risks from here? You've got New Caledonia to the south and Solomon Islands to the north that still have populations of filiaria carrying mosquito and filaria in the population.
LG: We need to make sure that we have some strategies in place to detect and prevent any future return of the disease. Me, as the director of public health, I will discuss with the minister to really care for the ones that have already been sick with the disease and also to ensure that there is a system in place to quickly detect any new cases if it happens that there are new cases and to prevent it from ever re-establishing itself in Vanuatu.
Len Tarivonda says lessons learned from the filariasis campaign should be applied to 'neglected tropical diseases' like trachoma, a leading cause of preventable blindness in the region.
