Controlling Disease Due To Helminth Infections

Helminth infections are caused by parasitic worms (including tapeworms and roundworms). These diseases are associated with poverty, and in school-age populations in developing countries, intestinal helminth infections rank first among the causes of all communicable and noncommunicable diseases. This book is based on papers presented at an OECD conference, held in Bali, Indonesia in February 2000, which sought to review activities for the control of diseases due to soil-transmitted helminth infections in Indonesia and neighbouring countries.

More than 2000 million people worldwide are affected by schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infections and 155 000 deaths are reported each year. These infections are diseases associated with poverty, and in school-age populations in developing countries, intestinal helminth infections rank first among the causes of all communicable and noncommunicable diseases. This book describes a cost-effective approach to the control of these infections, based on the use of periodic parasitological surveys of school population samples. It is intended as a guide for health education managers responsible for implementing community-based programmes.

Helminths are long-lived multicellular organisms that have co-evolved with humans over many thousands of years. They are responsible for infections which affect around one third of the human population, at global level. Despite the huge efforts in research during the last years, effective control of helminth infections is still far from optimal standards and the resulting diseases remain neglected. This book aims to give an up-date overview to the epidemiology (including molecular typing), specific biological, immunological and immunopathological aspects, diagnosis and perspectives of control of the most common helminth infections.

Written by internationally respected experts, Handbook of Human Helminthiasis provides information essential in the development of an integrated approach to the prevention, control and treatment of disease caused by endoparasitic helminths. The text is divided into sections dealing with the main groups of helminth infections and the diseases they i

"Over a billion people in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Americas are infected with one or more helminth species, causing morbidity that helps maintain the vicious cycle of poverty, decreased productivity, and inadequate socioeconomic development. This report presents an evaluation of current research and challenges in controlling the helminthiases of public health importance, including onchocerciasis, lymphatic filariasis, soil-transmitted helminthiases, schistosomiasis, food-borne trematodiases and taeniasis/cysticercosis. The evaluation covers five major themes -- intervention, epidemiology and surveillance, environmental and social ecology, data and modelling, and fundamental biology. Despite the recent demonstrated successes and expansion of tools for the helminthiases outlined here, and the development of some research capacity, the evaluation found major deficiencies in our current control tools, in diagnostics, and in our fundamental knowledge of helminth biology and transmission dynamics, as well as in capacity and policy for health research. Thus the current research issues are summarized here, and opportunities for improving disease control and reducing poverty are identified. Recommendations are presented to inform public health policy, guide implementation programmes, and focus the research community on the needs of disease control and the opportunities for bettering human welfare. This is one of ten disease and thematic reference group reports that have come out of the TDR Think Tank, all of which have contributed to the development of the Global Report for Research on Infectious Diseases of Poverty, available at: www.who.int/tdr/capacity/global_report ."--Page 4 of cover.

This manual focuses on how and when a set of low-cost or free drugs should be used in developing countries to control a set of diseases caused by worm infections. Preventive chemotherapy in this context means using drugs that are effective against a broad range of worm infections to simultaneously treat the four most common diseases caused by worms: river blindness (onchocerciasis), elephantiasis (lymphatic filariasis), schistosomiasis, and soil-transmitted helminthiasis. Significant opportunities also exist to integrate these efforts with the prevention and control of diseases such as trachoma. The new approach provides a critical first step in combining treatment regimens for diseases which, although different in themselves, require common resources and delivery strategies for control or elimination.

Reviews the WHO Global Programme to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis and its potential impact for health.

Helminth infections are common, cause considerable pathology, and alter a host’s immune profile. This can have important consequences not only on the host’s ability to control a helminth infection, but also on their ability to control unrelated infections. In endemic areas, understanding how helminth infection influences the outcome of common infectious diseases and changes the efficacy of childhood vaccination programs is an important public health question. This book reviews how host immunity to helminths alters our ability to respond to the major pathogens that exist in helminth endemic regions. Current understanding of how helminths alter important but relatively neglected contributors to the host’s anti-helminth immune responses are addressed, namely host antibody responses and how maternal infection may alter a child’s immune development. These are discussed in relation to the control of helminth infection and unrelated infections. Also covered are how helminth infections alter the host’s ability to control TB, HIV and malarial infections along with neglected bacterial infections, such as cholera, and how endemic helminth infections are likely to alter our ability to respond to life-saving vaccination strategies.