Coverage and compliance towards mass drug administration programme against lymphatic filariasis in Vijayapura (Bijapur) district, Karnataka, India.

Background: Lymphatic filariasis or elephantiasis is the most debilitating and disfiguring scourge among all diseases. The National Health Policy (2017) has set the goal of elimination of lymphatic filariasis in endemic pockets in India by 2017. The concept of MDA is to approach every individual in the target community and administer annual single dose of anti-filarial drugs. The objectives of the study were to assess the coverage, compliance and causes for noncompliance towards MDA in Vijayapura district and to assess the rates of directly observed treatment, source of information on MDA and incidence of side effects related to MDA Programme.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in one urban and three rural clusters in Vijayapura district of Karnataka. Totally 120 houses were covered with minimum of 30 houses in each of the cluster. Data was collected in a structured proforma by interview technique and entered in Microsoft Excel-2010 and analyzed with SPSS version 22.

Results: Out of 120 houses visited in 4 clusters consisting of 398 beneficiaries, the coverage of MDA was 80.3% and 72.5% had consumed the tablets. The coverage compliance gap was 7.8%. 71.7% of the respondents, had awareness regarding elephantiasis. The most common reason quoted by the beneficiaries for not consuming the tablet was lack of information of MDA programme/ Lf (13%) followed by fear of drugs (10%).

Conclusions: BCC is the essence of the hour to fulfil the goal of elimination of lymphatic filariasis; there is need for intensive IEC activities addressing the misconceptions among beneficiaries regarding adverse reactions of MDA through mass media, interpersonal communications.