Mass drug administration

Mass drug administration is the provision of medicines to an entire at-risk population, regardless of each person’s individual diagnosis, to prevent or control disease.

Preventive chemotherapy: The use of medicines to prevent or reduce disease in populations at risk, without requiring individual diagnosis. Mass drug administration is a population-wide form of preventive chemotherapy.
Lymphatic filariasis: A mosquito-borne parasitic disease that can cause chronic swelling and disability. Repeated drug campaigns aim to interrupt its transmission in endemic areas.
Test and treat: A strategy that tests individuals for a condition and treats those who test positive. It directs medicines to diagnosed cases rather than treating everyone in an at-risk group.
Pharmacovigilance: The detection, assessment, understanding, and prevention of adverse effects and other medicine-related problems. Large campaigns need systems to detect and respond to adverse events across treated populations.
Coverage threshold: The minimum proportion of a target population that must receive an intervention to achieve a specified public-health effect. Transmission control often depends on reaching enough people, not merely distributing doses.
Onchocerciasis: A parasitic disease caused by Onchocerca volvulus and transmitted by blackflies. Community-wide ivermectin treatment is a central control strategy.
Screening: The systematic use of tests to identify people who may have a disease before symptoms appear. Screening can guide individual treatment but is not required before mass drug administration.
Informed consent: A person’s voluntary agreement to an intervention after receiving relevant information about its purpose, risks, and alternatives. Public-health scale does not remove the need to explain treatment and respect voluntary choice.
Mass drug administration coverage: The proportion of a target population that receives a specified mass drug administration round. Coverage measures how much of the intended population actually receives treatment.
Schistosomiasis: A parasitic disease caused by blood flukes that infect people through contact with contaminated freshwater. Preventive treatment with praziquantel targets at-risk communities and school-age children.

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