High Levels of Community Support for Mansonellosis Interventions in an Endemic Area of the Brazilian Amazon

TL;DR

Residents in a Brazilian Amazon community showed strong support for mansonellosis interventions, especially when treatment duration was short.

Contribution

The study provides novel insights into community willingness to participate in mansonellosis treatment programs compared to STH interventions.

Findings

Community support for mansonellosis interventions was comparable to STH interventions, though STH support was consistently higher.

Shorter treatment regimens significantly increased willingness to participate in mansonellosis treatment programs.

Knowledge of a ≥50% infection risk significantly increased participation in helminthic treatment programs.

Abstract

Mansonellosis is a chronic infectious tropical disease that affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide but is not currently targeted for control. In this study, we interviewed 320 residents from Sao Gabriel do Cachoeira (SGC) about their support for soil transmitted helminth (STH) and mansonellosis interventions. Our survey found no significant difference between community support for mansonellosis and STH disease treatment when comparing any equivalent treatment regimen or program, although support for STH treatments was always higher than for mansonellosis treatments. No significant differences were detected when comparing community members’ willingness to participate in treatment programs and their willingness to allow family members to participate in an equivalent program. Our survey did, however, almost always find that significantly more community members were willing to participate in a proposed treatment program if the treatment regimen of that program was shorter than an otherwise equivalent regimen. Although significantly fewer people said they would participate in a curative four-week treatment course for mansonellosis than in a mansonellosis mass drug administration (MDA) program, significantly more community members said they would take a curative mansonellosis treatment course that lasted seven days or less than they would participate in any type of anthelminthic MDA proposed to them. The number of community members who said they would participate in any helminthic treatment program if they knew there was a ≥50% chance that they were infected was significantly higher than the number who said that they would without knowing the regional prevalence rate.

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