Table 5.

Lymphatic Filariasis elimination and the Millennium Development Goals

Goal 1

• Eliminate extreme poverty and hunger

• LF is a disease of poor people in poor countries, particularly in individuals earning below $1/day. LF elimination reduces health care costs and increases productivity

• Reduces prevalence of underweight children by improving nutritional status, micronutrient uptake enhanced through albendazole and by improvement of agricultural productivity and improving household/community food security

Goal 2

• Achieve universal primary education

• LF elimination will increase capacity of poor families to access education through increased income, reduced caring for afflicted parents, increased school attendance and performance via drug treatment impact on intestinal helminths

• Schools can act as an entry point for drug distribution, increasing both coverage and parental awareness of the benefits

Goal 3

• Promote gender equity and empowerment

• Women play a role as drug distributors enhancing respect and empowerment

• Women's marital prospects enhanced as LF control reduces stigma of disease

Goal 4 and Goal 5

• Reduce child mortality and reduce maternal mortality

• Women's health status improves as albendazole alleviates hookworm anaemia

• Anaemia → better birth outcomes → reduced prevalence of low birth weight babies hence reduced maternal and infant mortality

Goal 6

• Combat HIV/AIDS/malaria and other diseases

• LF and malaria control interlinked by bednets, alleviation of anaemia by albendazole; drug distribution can enhance bednet coverage and re-impregnation rates

• Albendazole impacts on child and maternal mortality via alleviation of anaemia burden

Goal 7 and Goal 8

• Ensure environmental sustainability

• Develop a Global partnership for Development

• GAELF and GPELF are an effective diverse global partnership committed to elimination of a disease of poverty by 2020.

• Elimination has been achieved in several countries bringing development benefits to poor communities