Global Programme to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis

A World Health Organization programme launched in 2000 to eliminate lymphatic filariasis, a mosquito-borne parasitic disease that can cause disfiguring swelling of the limbs and genitals (elephantiasis), as a public health problem. Its principal tool is mass drug administration: once-yearly distribution of albendazole paired with either ivermectin or diethylcarbamazine to entire at-risk populations, donated by pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline and Eisai. The programme covers 72 historically endemic countries across Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Americas. By the early 2020s it had delivered more than 9 billion cumulative treatments, more than a billion people no longer required preventive chemotherapy, and dozens of countries had been formally validated by WHO as having eliminated the disease as a public health problem.