Whether two rounds of MDA are necessary or sufficient and the optimal sampling strategies and endpoints for stopping MDA remain undefined. No children were Mf positive. However, LF infection was highly heterogeneous; 8 villages Model-based geostatistics was more effective than PPS in sampling high-risk LF sites in a heterogeneous area.
Higher-prevalence areas will need additional MDA rounds, which could be targeted to smaller evaluation units to cut costs. This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.
Funding: 1. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, publication decision, or manuscript preparation. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Lymphatic filariasis LF is a disease caused by parasitic nematodes transmitted by mosquitoes. The infection leads to a spectrum of clinical outcomes that range from asymptomatic microfilaremia parasite larvae circulating in the blood to hydrocele, lymphedema, and elephantiasis [ 1 ].
Lymphatic filariasis is caused by the nematodes Wuchereria bancrofti , Brugia malay i, and Brugia timori , of which W. The World Health Organization WHO currently estimates that million people in 44 countries are at risk for LF and that 15 million are disfigured and incapacitated by the disease [ 3 ].
