Night blood survey to detect filariasis begins in 8 blocks from today
Prayagraj: The health department teams has identified 8 blocks of the district, including Ram Nagar, Meja, Kotwa, Kaudhiyara, Dhanupur, Soraon, Baharia and Holagarh, for the night blood survey programme under the filaria eradication campaign.
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Teams will collect 7,200 samples, with 900 from each block. For this, the department has identified three sites in each block for sample collection.
District malaria officer (Prayagraj) AK Singh told TOI: "A night blood survey is primarily used to assess the presence and prevalence of microfilariae in the blood, particularly in the context of lymphatic filariasis. This method is crucial because microfilariae, the larval stage of filarial worms, tend to circulate in higher concentrations in the peripheral blood during night-time hours for certain species.
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He said the survey will begin on Wednesday and completed in next six days.
Singh said the health teams have identified 24 sites in eight blocks and around 300 samples of persons aged 20 years and above would be collected from each site.
The authorities are carrying out an anti-filaria campaign across the district, including 21 urban community health centres and 23 urban primary health centres, for the past three years.
Under it, suspected cases were given a three-drug combination treatment using ivermectin, diethylcarbamazine and albendazole (popularly known as IDA) in Feb this year, and now the samples of these persons could be collected for assessment.
Singh claimed, "If nine out of 900 samples are found positive in a particular block, there would be re-medication of the three-drug (IDA) combination among the cases. And if passed, the transmission access survey (TAS) would be conducted.
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TAS aims to evaluate the effectiveness of drugs in reducing the transmission."
Experts claimed that TAS is a crucial tool used in disease elimination programmes to determine if the infection levels have been reduced to a point where mass drug administration can be stopped. TAS also helps to assess whether the community has achieved the threshold where mosquitoes are unlikely to sustain transmission, and recrudescence (re-emergence of the disease) is improbable.
TAS is scheduled at every two-year interval.
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