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| Summary |
Over a billion people in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and
the Americas are infected with one or more helminth
species, causing morbidity that helps maintain the vicious
cycle of poverty, decreased productivity, and inadequate
socioeconomic development.
This report presents an evaluation of current research and
challenges in controlling the helminthiases of public health
importance, including onchocerciasis, lymphatic filariasis,
soil-transmitted helminthiases, schistosomiasis, food-borne
trematodiases and taeniasis/cysticercosis. The evaluation
covers five major themes - intervention, epidemiology and
surveillance, environmental and social ecology, data and
modelling, and fundamental biology.
Despite the recent demonstrated successes and expansion of
tools for the helminthiases outlined here, and the development
of some research capacity, the evaluation found major
deficiencies in our current control tools, in diagnostics, and
in our fundamental knowledge of helminth biology and
transmission dynamics, as well as in capacity and policy for
health research.
Thus the current research issues are summarized here, and
opportunities for improving disease control and reducing
poverty are identified. Recommendations are presented
to inform public health policy, guide implementation
programmes, and focus the research community on the
needs of disease control and the opportunities for bettering
human welfare.
This is one of ten disease and thematic reference group
reports that have come out of the TDR Think Tank, all of
which have contributed to the development of the Global
Report for Research on Infectious Diseases of Poverty, available
at: www.who.int/tdr/stewardship/global_report/en/index.html
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