How can someone get elephantiasis (filariasis)? & bull; hello healthy

Elephantiasis is a class of infectious diseases caused by filarial worms and transmitted by various types of mosquitoes. This disease is chronic (chronic) and if you don't get treatment, it can cause permanent disability in the form of enlargement of the legs, arms and genitals, both in women and men. Elephantiasis is not a deadly disease, but it can interfere with daily activities and be embarrassing.

What happens if someone has elephantiasis?

WHO explains that elephantiasis is a neglected tropical disease. The infection is usually acquired during childhood, and causes hidden damage to the lymphatic system. The appearance of the disease itself looks painful and is profoundly deforming. Lymphoendema, elephantiasis, and swelling of the scrotum can occur later in life and cause permanent disability. Patients are not only physically disabled, but also suffer mental, social and financial losses, thus contributing to stigma and poverty.

Currently, about 1.10 billion people in 55 countries live in areas that require preventive chemotherapy to stop the spread of infection. About 80% of these people live in the following 10 countries: Angola, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Indonesia, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria and the Republic of Tanzania.

Causes of elephantiasis and transmission process

According to WHO, there are three types of filarial worms that cause elephantiasis, namely:

• Wuchereria bancrofti, which is responsible for 90% of cases.
• Brugia malayi, which caused most cases of the rest.
• Brugia timori, which causes a small proportion of cases.

Adult worms stay in the lymphatic system and interfere with the immune system. Worms can live for an average of 6-8 years, and during their lifetime, they produce millions of microfilariae (adult larvae) that circulate in the blood.

Mosquitoes become infected with microfilariae when they ingest infected human blood. Adult microfilariae turn into infective larvae in mosquitoes. When an infected mosquito bites a person, the larvae enter the human body and migrate to the lymphatic vessels and then become adult worms.

Filariasis can be transmitted by a variety of mosquitoes, for example the Culex mosquito (which circulates throughout urban and semi-urban areas), the Anopheles mosquito (which circulates in rural areas), and the Aedes mosquito (which is abundant in endemic islands in the Pacific).

Symptoms and characteristics of elephantiasis

According to the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI), the symptoms and signs of elephantiasis are divided into two, namely acute symptoms and chronic symptoms. In acute symptoms, you will feel:

• Fever repeated for 3-5 days (fever disappears when resting and appears again after strenuous activity).
• Swollen lymph nodes (without any injury) in the groin or underarm that appear red, hot, and painful.
• Inflammation of the lymph ducts that feel hot and painful, which radiates from the base of the leg or base of the arm towards the tip.
• Enlarged limbs, arms, breasts, or testicles, which look slightly red and feel hot.

With chronic symptoms you will feel persistent enlargement in the legs, arms, breasts, or testicles.

How to prevent and treat elephantiasis

According to PMI, there are several ways to prevent and treat elephantiasis. For prevention, you must:

• Conduct education and introduction of elephantiasis to sufferers and residents around them.
• Carry out eradication of mosquitoes in each area to break the chain and transmission of this disease.
• Doing the 4M PLUS movement (draining, closing, burying, monitoring plus not hanging clothes, maintaining mosquito larvae eating fish, avoiding mosquito bites by using a mosquito net while sleeping / installing mosquito netting on the vent, and affixing abate) and maintaining environmental cleanliness is the most important thing for prevent the development of mosquitoes in the area.
• Try to avoid being bitten by transmitting mosquitoes.

For treatment, you must:

• Encourage sufferers to immediately seek treatment at a health facility.
• Report case findings to the local Puskesmas and village officials.
• Mass treatment can be carried out in areas affected by the outbreak using the drug Diethyl Carbamazine Citrate (DEC), which is combined with albenzol once a year for 5-10 years. To prevent reactions such as fever, you can give Paracetamol. Mass treatment can be stopped if the microfilariae rate (MF rate) is <1%.

By eradicating elephantiasis, you can prevent unnecessary suffering and also contribute to poverty prevention.