The Health Department will begin a five-day transmission assessment survey (TAS) among students of Classes 1 and 2 in select aided and government schools in the district on Tuesday.
The drive assumes significance against the backdrop of the detection of 115 filariasis cases in the district between December and January, a majority of them among migrant labourers. Around 50 cases were reported from the Kayakkody grama panchayat alone.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines, mass drug administration (MDA) is undertaken to reduce infection in the community to levels below a threshold at which mosquitoes are unable to continue spreading the parasites from person to person, and new infections are prevented.
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The WHO recommends determining when infections have been reduced below the target thresholds and MDA can be stopped. Once MDA is stopped, TAS is used as a surveillance tool to determine that infection levels are sustained below target thresholds.
The department, however, is not planning to undertake any survey now among migrant labourers, District Medical Officer V. Jayashree told The Hindu .
Sources in the department said that the surveillance programmes were confined to distribution of Diethylcarbamazine (DEC) and Albendazole tablets
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They claimed that there was no need to conduct an MDA across the State as the prevalence rate is found to be below critical level though no survey has been done among migrant labourers.
12 teams deputed
In Kerala, the MDA programme is now confined to Palakkad and a few blocks in Malappuram. As many as 12 teams, including a block medical officer and health inspector, will be deputed for TAS at schools, the sources added.