Talk:Mass drug administration

Scope of usage

Gosh good addition and well done with all the referencing markup for your first series of edits (unless your a seasoned anon editor). I've not heard of this before and so was left confused by the first two sentances. The second sentance states "This article describes the administration of antimalarial drugs to whole populations ..." - so two possibilities come to mind:

1. does this mean that MDA has been used in other situiations, and malaria is given just as one example ?

   If so, then other examples need be given and what is quite a full and heavily referenced account of this general MDA application with respect to malaria possibly then becomes a subtopic (eg Malaria mass drug administration).

2. Or is MDA exclusive to malaria as just one approach used to manage this single disease ?

   If so, then the first sentance of "The administration of drugs to whole populations irrespective of disease status is referred to as mass drug administration (MDA)." is misleading as it implies a general approach, but one which has only been applied in one situation - perhaps it would need to be rephrased as "Mass drug administration (MDA) is the administration of antimalarial drugs to whole populations irrespective of the disease status of individuals."

David Ruben ^Talk 22:54, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I share your concern about the article's title perhaps not completely reflecting its content. I suspect that it would be trivial to find examples of water fluoridation being considered (at least by some) a "mass drug administration". Depending on how you're defining "population", then there may be examples with prophylactic drugs (e.g., antivirals for everyone exposed to a possible case of influenza). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:45, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Minor point, in UK where sustained widespread community transmission occuring (London & Birmingham) we've moved from containment (treat case and all close contacts) to mitigation where concerns for viral resistance mean only contacts with special risks get prophylaxis, so not sure that's a good example - but water fluoridation, iodine into salt and folate in flour come to mind as "mass administration", but I'm not sure if these count as drugs and thus "mass drug administration"? David Ruben ^Talk 00:00, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

WHO sources

I wonder if any of the WHO sources given are available online ? Are there anymore citation details that can be given for these ? I failled to find them on quick use of WHO search at http://www.who.int/search/en/ David Ruben ^Talk 00:38, 24 June 2009 (UTC)