DESPITE meeting the national target of 65 per cent coverage in the 2019 Mass Drug Administration Campaign, the Pan American Health Organization/ World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Health, has commenced the process of ensuring the 2020 campaign achieves maximum satisfaction, all in an effort to ensure Guyana is a filarial-free nation, by December 2020.

The process commenced on Thursday, with an assessment in Region 10, where officials and MDA field officers were able to reflect on the campaign, what mistakes were made and what best practices need to be implemented, to ensure the upcoming campaign reaps maximum success. Region 10 was the first region for this post MDA meeting to be held, and Region 10 has been identified as the first region for MDA 2020 to commence.
In fact, Dr. Jean Alexandre, PAHO’s Adviser, Health Surveillance Disease Prevention and Control, related that Region 10 was the most challenging region, since it received the lowest coverage, which was 68 per cent, oppose to other regions that achieved between 72 per cent to 90 per cent coverage. In fact, Region 10 only attained this target after a one week extension to the campaign, since the allotted two weeks did not make the cut. Alexandre related that there were serious challenges in the region and it also attained 19 per cent refusal rate; the highest ever attained.

One of the major factors that contributed to this was that Region 10 was the last region to be targetted and this was after there were reports in certain sections of the media, that there was at least one fatality following the pill distribution. The post-mortem on the victim later revealed this was far from the case. He is hoping, going forward, there is more responsible reporting surrounding the MDA in 2020. “Those allegations that the pills are killing people, as this was the last region, this would have influenced negatively on the people, so they had a number of refusal here, the highest refusal we had in any region was three per cent. In Region 10, we had a refusal of 19 per cent, because people were afraid.”
In addition, to ensure there is a more effective 2020 campaign, not only in Region10, but all regions, Alexandre related that there will be more conscientious training with the pill distributers, to ensure they are capable of public education and sensitization, while in the fields.

During the day-long discussion, field officers discussed various mechanism that should be adopted in the 2020 campaign, which include working more suitable hours to meet the target audience, more sensitization efforts, timely delivery of pills to field distributers amongst others. Alexandre said he is optimistic that better results will be derived from the 2020 MDA, which is slated for October. “It was the first time we introduced IDA, it was the first time we covered all ten regions, it was the first time for all these things, so now we have introduced Ivermectin and there is not any new region anymore, everyone know what the campaign is about; I am optimistic we will be filaria free” he said