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Eliminating lymphatic filariasis

Eliminating lymphatic filariasis

The fight against lymphatic filariasis (commonly known as elephantiasis) spans the globe. Through partnership and donation of albendazole. GlaxoSmithKline is working to help eliminate this terrible disease.

Lymphatic filariasis (LF) is one of the world’s most disabling diseases. Over one billion people in 83 countries live at risk of infection, and by 2005 approximately 120 million people are already affected. The disease is caused by a parasite transmitted from one human to another by mosquitoes.

As disfiguring as leprosy, and as crippling as polio, LF can lead to massive swelling of the limbs, elephantiasis of the skin and hydrocele (watery fluid around the testicles). Infection is usually caught in childhood, although severe forms of the disease usually appear in adults.

The lifecycle of the LF parasite, however, can be interrupted by treating the entire at-risk population annually for at least five years with two antiparasitic medicines: albendazole, manufactured and donated by GlaxoSmithKline globally, plus diethylcarbamazine (DEC); or albendazole plus Mectizan (donated by Merck for Africa and Yemen).

In 1998, GSK formed a partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) to eliminate LF, and committed to donate its antiparasitic medicine, albendazole, to all countries at risk for as long as necessary to eliminate the disease as a public health problem.

In addition to donating albendazole (estimated to be over 5 billion treatments over 20 years), GSK provides £1 million per year in grants and has staff dedicated to supporting the programme.

Working directly with WHO, GSK helped build a Global Alliance that includes the Ministries of Health of LF-suffering countries and over 40 partner organisations from the public, private and academic sectors. The results have been quite remarkable.

To date, GSK has donated over 400 million albendazole treatments to 40 countries. Over 100 million people are being reached by mass drug administration (MDA) programmes; 30 million of the recipients are children.

Results from countries that have completed several rounds of MDA show dramatic reductions in levels of infections. The trends look promising for the target of stopping spread of the disease.

In 2005, JP Garnier, GSK’s then CEO, went to Africa to see first hand the operations of the LF and other community programmes.

“In Ghana, where the LF programme has been running for four years they have been treating all ten million people at risk from the disease. We are doing the right thing which is perhaps a small thing in the scale of Africa’s problems, but not insignificant to the people around the world who could contract LF,” he said.

“Whilst in South Africa, before attending the inauguration of a new unit in our Cape Town Factory dedicated to producing albendazole, one of the doctors I met said to me, ‘today is going to touch your heart forever’. She was right. I was able to witness the realities of Africa and what’s really important there. I feel proud of the role that my company is playing and hopeful that we are doing some good.”