Abstract:
Background
The African Program for Onchocerciais Control (APOC) with a main strategy of community
directed treatment with ivermectin (CDTI) was established with the aim of eliminating
Onchocerciasis as a disease of public health and socio-economic importance. The study
area was a hyper endemic area just before the implementation of CDTI. It has been implemented for six years in this district but yet not been evaluated. So, the objective of this study
was to evaluate the impact of six years CDTI on parasitological and clinical indices of
Onchocerciasis
Methods
This study employed a pre-post impact evaluation design. The minimum sample size for
this study was 1318; the respondents were selected by multi-stage sampling technique.
Data on socio-demographic characteristics using a semi-structured questionnaire, clinical
examination for skin signs and symptoms of Onchocerciasis and two bloodless skin snips
from each side of the gluteal fold were taken from the entire study participants. SPSS version 16.0 and Medcalc version 12.2.1.0 were used for analysis.
Result
The microfilaridermia reduced from the pre-intervention value of 74.8% to 40.7%, indicating
a 45.6% reduction, mean intensity from 32.1(SD = 61.5) mf/mg skin snip to 18.7(SD = 28.7)
indicating 41.75% reduction, CMFL from 19.6 mf/mg skin snip to 4.7 indicating 76% reduction. The result also showed that microfilaridermia and mean intensity decreased as the
number of treatment taken increased. Pruritis, leopard skin, onchocercomata and hanging
groin reduced by 54.4%, 61.3%, 77.7% and 88.5% respectively.
