Last Updated: 09/12/2020
Mass radical treatment of a group of foreign workers to mitigate the risk of re-establishment of malaria in Sri Lanka
Objectives
This study describes the implementation of an intervention comprising mass radical treatment (MRT) for P. vivax of an entire group of individuals from India, resident and working at a factory construction site in a previously malarious area of Sri Lanka. The objective of MRT was to eliminate any prevailing erythrocytic, sexual or dormant hepatic stages of P. vivax in the group of migrants, thereby reducing the risk of blood infections occurring by way of relapses or recrudescences and initiating a cycle of transmission in the area.
All thirty-one eligible foreign workers in the factory gave informed consent for radical treatment. The workers were screened for malaria by microscopy and rapid diagnostic test, their haemoglobin level assessed, and tested for Glucose 6 phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency (G6PD) prior to treatment with chloroquine (over three days) and primaquine (for 14 days).
Subjects were monitored daily for the occurrence of adverse effects including symptoms of haemolysis until completion of the treatment, and all were followed up at monthly intervals by microscopy for a period of 5 months.
Dec 2018 — Mar 2019
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