The Access Project’s efforts to enlist local authorities in the campaign against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in Rwanda are paying off. At a one-day meeting in November to disseminate NTD survey results, Musanze District Director of Health Sabahira Deo said district authorities, are “determined to be more involved in the fight.”

Sabahira said he intends to include prevention, treatment, and behavior change communication (BCC) activities in the district’s 2009 performance contract. “We don’t need to wait for the mass drug administration or the Ministry of Health sensitization campaigns on NTDs,” he added. “The prevention and BCC have to be in our daily activities.”

The one-day meeting, organized by TRAC Plus-Center for Infectious Disease Control in partnership with the National Reference Laboratory and the Access Project, was aimed at disseminating the NTD survey findings to all local partners.

Prof. Dr. Michael Kramer, the Director General of TRAC Plus-CIDC, said that, with Access Project’s help, mapping and baseline surveys were conducted on soil-transmitted helminths, schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis, and trachoma to determine the distribution, prevalence, and intensity of these diseases among Rwandans. The country’s fight against these diseases began after the first results, he added, with immediate administration of mass drug treatment. Up to now, the NTD Control Program has already treated more than five million people countrywide. 

The Ministry of Health’s NTD Control Program, based at the Directorate General of the TRAC Plus, receives technical, logistical and financial support from Columbia University’s Access Project. Access has also trained health workers, teachers and journalists and organized several sensitization campaigns about NTDs

Based on the survey results, schistosomiasis (bilharzia) prevalence was 2.7% on average among school-going children countrywide, and as high as 69.5% in some areas. The highest prevalence was found along the shores of lakes Ruhondo, Burera, and Kivu in Rutsiro District and Lake Muhazi in Gicumbi District. The survey also showed that intestinal worms (soil-transmitted helminthiasis) were highly endemic with an overall prevalence of 65.8%. The highest percentage of active trachoma was found in Gatsibo and Nyaruguru districts (15.3% and 12.6% respectively) in Rwanda. Only one case of lymphatic filariasis was detected during the mapping survey, indicating that it is not a public health problem in Rwanda.

Neglected tropical diseases are a group of parasitic and bacterial infections affecting around one billion of the most world’s poorest people, with the majority located in Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia and South America.