Elimination of Lymphatic Filariasis – Current Status and Way Ahead

National Filaria Control programme in India was launched in 1955 to delimit the problem and implement detection and treatment of microfilaria carriers and disease cases with Diethylcarbamazine tablets and antilarval measures in selected urban areas covering about 53 million people. Global programme to eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis came into existence in 2000 consequent to the resolution of World Health Assembly in 1997 to eliminate lymphatic filariasis globally by 2020. The twin pillar elimination strategy of annual Mass Drug Administration (MDA) with anti filarial drugs to the entire population living in an endemic area and morbidity management of those who are already inflicted with the disease are being implemented in 250 LF endemic districts of India since 2004. The antilarval operation in 206 towns covered under NFCP is continued and the budget of NFCP is merged with UMS for this support. However, the target population was about 600 million. Annual MDA was started with DEC alone and subsequently coadministration of DEC with Albendazole was followed since 2007. Most of the MDA districts have completed more than 5 rounds of MDA irrespective of the drug and its combination. 12 MDA districts with effective coverage (65%) and less than 1% Mf prevalence in all the sentinel and spotcheck sites were subjected to Transmission Assessment Survey (TAS) and all of them are qualified for stopping MDA. It has been proposed to carry out Mf survey and TAS in 10 additional sites in 95 districts. The roadmap, prepared in achieving elimination of LF in India is discussed in this article.