Authors

Discussion

National-scale schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminth (STH) control programmes are now operational across sub-Saharan Africa. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends monitoring and evaluation as a component of these control programmes to estimate the impact of treatment on levels of infection, often using data collected from the target population of school-aged children (5 to 14 years of age). Nevertheless, infection occurs below and above the school-age and thus age-intensity (AI) and age-prevalence (AP) profiles developed across a wide age-range could help to provide a more accurate picture of the current infection patterns in endemic areas. Data from 7500 individuals were collected from 3 different representative prevalence and treatment history groups in Uganda: 1. “low prevalence and treated”– areas that have supressed transmission as a result of ≥ 6 years of annual mass drug administration (MDA); 2. “low prevalence and untreated”–areas that are at low-prevalence endemic equilibrium; and 3. “high prevalence and treated”-  areas still experiencing high levels of infection after ≥ 6 years of annual MDA. Results from the first year showed that the age-infection profile for S. mansoni followed similar patterns as found in previous studies. For the STH, the overall prevalence was low and a trend could only be seen in the AI profile for hookworm infection, where infection intensities increas