NCIRS staff field deployments to Samoa

In short deployments from June to October 2018, Sarah Sheridan, Julia Maguire, Kelley Meder and Meru Sheel worked in Samoa as part of a country-wide study led by researchers at the Australian National University. The study, ‘Surveillance and Monitoring to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis and Scabies in Samoa’ aims to evaluate the effectiveness of first ever mass drug administration using a triple-drug therapy.

As epidemiologists, they collected mosquito and human samples from households in villages across the two large islands to assess the baseline population prevalence of filariasis.