Compliance with eight years of annual ivermectin treatment of onchocerciasis in Cameroon and Nigeria

As the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC) matured into its 10th year of ensuring community involvement in mass annual treatment of onchocerciasis with ivermectin, there was recognition of a need to study not only annual coverage of ivermectin in villages but also the compliance of individual villagers with these annual treatments.

A multi-site study in five APOC sponsored projects in Nigeria and Cameroon was undertaken to identify the socio-demographic correlates of compliance with ivermectin treatment. The study indicated that eight-year compliance ranged from 0 to 8 times with 42.9% taking ivermectin between 6-8 times annually (high compliance). Statistical analysis showed that high compliance was positively associated with being male, over 24 years of age, having been married, not being Christian, having little or no formal education and being in the ethnic majority.