The Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) has launched a three-day programme to distribute Albandazole tablets to eradicate filaria, as part of National Filaria Day celebrations.
The Corporation organised a meet at Gandhiji Municipal School in One Town to distribute the tablets to the students on Tuesday.
On the occasion, Chief Medical Officer of Health M. Satyanarayana Raju said that the mass drug administration (MDA) programme was one of the measures to eliminate filaria by breaking the lifecycle link between the human and mosquito.
As many as 4,000 health staff would distribute tablets free of cost to 9 lakh people in the city. The people who are in the age group of 2 to 60 should take the tablets.
The health staff would administer the tablets to every person, and the dosage of the tablet depends on the age of a person.
Dosage
The children in the age group of 2 to 5 would have to take one tablet, while the children who are in the age group of 6 to 14 would have to take two tablets. And those who attained 15 years would have to consume three tablets.
The tablets should not be taken with empty stomach. The pregnant women, those suffering with chronic diseases and children below two years of age, however, were exempted from taking the tablets, he said.
Senior medical officer Iqbal Hussain, VMC assistant medical officer of health Gopal Naik, Deputy Educational Officer K. Durga Prasad, Gandhiji Municipal High School head master P. Venkateswara Rao and others were present.
