An inclusive dose pole for treatment of schistosomiasis in infants and preschool children with praziquantel

Abstract

In large-scale interventions for control of schistosomiasis, use of the WHO dose pole is favoured for mass drug administration of praziquantel. Application of this simple tool has enabled pragmatic tablet dosing using patient height as a proxy for bodyweight, allowing control programmes to expand into resource-poor settings. Here we briefly summarize the inception and development of the existing WHO dose pole and discuss a proposed update which now permits dosing of infants and preschool children (height<94cm). Using this pole, we suggest that mass drug administration can be better optimized, streamlining general treatment to reduce drug wastage which could lead to significant programmatic savings and allocation of treatments to younger children with minimal additional cost.