The Integration of Schistosomiasis

Since 1996, The Carter Center has been working with the national River Blindness Program developing a community distribution network in country to distribute the drug Mectizan® in parts of Nigeria. In 1998 the program began investigating the idea of targeting additional diseases through the same distribution channel, an approach that had never been done before.

Soon after the investigation started lymphatic filariasis was found to be preventable when Mectizan treatment was combined with the drug albendazole. By March 2000, communities in the Plateau and Nasarawa states, endemic for both river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, were being treated with the combined drug therapy. Simultaneously, the Center's groundbreaking approach was discovering that schistosomiasis control could be integrated too. That same year, urinary schistosomiasis was added, and today approximately 300 villages that receive the drug praziquantel also receive albendazole and Mectizan.