kanpur a threeday mass drug administration mda campaign against various types of filariasis will start in the city from today this programme is organized under the state health department which will be carried out in two cities lucknow and kanpur in phase one the filariasis preventive drug will be given doortodoor like polio drops the target is to cover nearly 38 lakh people living in rural and urban population above two years of age kids under two years and pregnant ladies will not be administered the drug chief medical officer cmo rp yadav informed that health workers will visit houses and distribute filariasis resistant medicine these teams will also tell people about the benefits of taking the medicine the medicines will also be available in hospitals health posts chcs and phcs everyone in the city will be given one dose of diethylcarbamazine citrate dec in the threeday massive filariasis control drive kids from 25 years will be given one doze while kids from 613 years will be given two doses of the medicine the people over 14 years of age will be given three doses of the medicine added cmo further for this mass drug administration purpose as many as 15842 health department workers have been deployed who will work in twomember team and visit doortodoor for administering dce drug these teams will also conduct a survey on the people to identify the filaria patients this drive will be conducted in both urban and rural areas simultaneously on december 27 28 and 29 after the filaria patients are identified they will get free treatment in the nearby hospital and health center we will also conduct free operations in the cases of severe filaria added cmo further the district malaria officer dmo informed that as the official number of filaria patients reported in the city were 8658 in 2010 while the same were 8438 and 10027 in 2007 respectively he added that the number of cases reported in 201112 is not estimated but the numbers is expected to be much higher this time filaria is caused by worms known as filarial parasites is transmitted through mosquitoes generally when a mosquito feed on the infected persons blood it ingests the microfilaria in the blood of the host the ingested microfilaria grows and within 12 days it reaches a stage when it can infect another human being when the mosquito with infective stage larva bites another person the parasites are dropped on skin which enters through the puncture made by the mosquito while feeding and enters the blood stream thus to interrupt the transmission of the parasite mass drug administration mda has to be conducted generally people living in filaria endemic areas look healthy but they might carry parasite in the blood without any recognisable symptoms at the initial stage after six to eight years of infection clinical symptoms such as swollen legs or enlarged lymph nodes lymph vessel or hydrocele may appear informed dmo further