Improving helminth treatment access: costs and opportunities.

Soil-transmitted helminths affect about 1·5 billion people living in the world's poorest regions. The main public health strategy for morbidity control is mass drug administration (MDA; also referred to as preventive chemotherapy), which is the widespread empirical treatment of populations, traditionally school-aged children. WHO set a goal of achieving 75% coverage of at-risk populations by 2020, but estimates from 2014 suggest only 47% global coverage of children. To reach the WHO 2020 goal, opportunities must be taken to find cost efficiencies, collaborate across health sectors, and improve measurement of the costs and effects of MDA programmes. The substantial gap in target coverage for treatment of soil-transmitted helminths poses a great challenge, but an even greater opportunity to address the global burden from these infections.