Problems against Filaria Health Workers in Filaria Endemic Region: A Practical Study

ABSTRACT: Filaria, known to be the second most disabling disease in the world, is a mosquito borne disease caused by Wuchereria bancrofti. Its symptoms include abnormal swellings in the legs, arms and breasts i.e. elephantiasis while accumulation of fluid in the scrotum leads to the formation of Hydrocoele. This disease is found in the tropics and subtropics with over 120 million people affected and 1.34 billion are at risk of Lymphatic Filariasis (LF). The World Health Organization (WHO) has planned LF elimination from the world by the year 2020. For this the endemic countries are implementing various strategies laid down by the WHO. In India, the state governments are working in collaboration with WHO to limit the disability. But, unless the concerned authorities come to know the problems faced by the Filaria workers in endemic regions, it seems a difficult task to identify and limit the filarial transmission. Though the number of filarial cases has declined drastically in the recent past, like Polio, we are near to the elimination of LF from our country. But, there are some loop holes observed in the strategies of the Filaria Control Units. The timing of night clinics is not so useful to collect blood samples having filarial nematodes as the time of their abundance in the blood stream is in between 10pm to 02am. In the initial blood sampling visits with the Filaria workers working under this scheme, it was found that they were facing number of problems which may be the reason for its slow rate of elimination as new cases are still found. So, the current study is an attempt to know these problems in details