This archive report was first published on 17 November 2021.
Nearly 4.5 million Tanzanians in Dar es Salaam have received doses of two drugs donated by pharmaceutical companies in a significant step towards eliminating Elephantiasis caused by Lymphatic Filariasis (LF) in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.
Ending LF Elephantiasis as a public health problem in the three nations would make them the first cluster of countries in Africa to achieve this breakthrough, following the announcement by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in January 2020 that Malawi had eliminated the disease as the second country in Africa, after Togo in 2017.
LF, or Elephantiasis, is a Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) that causes swelling and disfigurement, leaving thousands of East Africans permanently disabled.
However, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania had been moving rapidly towards eliminating the disease until Covid-19 restrictions halted preventative and curative drug treatments and surveys to assess progress towards elimination.
After the WHO issued guidelines for the resumption of mass treatments of NTDs, Kenya treated 3.3 million people for LF along its Coast in December 2020.
But then UK government aid cuts, triggered by the costs of the pandemic, saw most of the budget for elimination programmes removed.
Thanks to emergency funding from the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, the Dar es Salaam treatments, as well as mass drug administrations in Zanzibar and other Neglected Tropical Diseases in Kenya and Uganda, are now underway.
“The new CIFF funding has been essential in moving the dial on LF, from millions of people at risk to now very few. In this, the Dar es Salaam MDA is critical as a key measure in eliminating the disease in three of the last eight districts with LF in Tanzania,” said Deo Damas, Crown Agents’ Country Lead in Tanzania.
However, the emergency programme has not yet filled all the financing gaps, with planned surveys to detect remaining prevalence now suspended, as well as training and initiatives to treat NTDs under the countries’ universal healthcare programmes.
