ArticleBMC public health2020
Community-based door to door census of suspected people living with epilepsy: empowering community drug distributors to improve the provision of care to rural communities in Cameroon.
Article in BMC public health, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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3 citing papers in PubMed, 8 citations in OpenAlex.
- High epilepsy prevalence and excess mortality in onchocerciasis-endemic counties of South Sudan: A call for integrated interventions.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2025Article
- Accelerating onchocerciasis elimination in humanitarian settings: lessons from South Sudan.International health · 2025Article
- A mixed-methods exploration into the resilience of community drug distributors conducting mass drug administration for preventive chemotherapy of lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis in Côte d'Ivoire and Uganda.PLOS global public health · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 5 institutions in 4 countries.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundEpilepsy is a severe neurological disorder with huge psychological, social, and economic consequences, including premature deaths and loss of productivity. Sub-Saharan Africa carries the highest burden of epilepsy. The management of epilepsy in Cameroon remains unsatisfactory due to poor identification of cases and a limited knowledge of the distribution of the disease. The objective of this study was to determine whether community drug distributors (CDDs) - volunteers selected by their communities to distribute ivermectin against onchocerciasis and who have been proven efficient to deliver other health interventions such as insecticide-treated bed nets to prevent malaria, vitamin A tablets, and albendazole to treat soil transmitted helminthiasis - can be used to reliably identify people living with epilepsy to promote better management of cases.
methodsThis study was carried out in three health Districts in Cameroon. An exhaustive house to house census was carried out by trained CDDs under the supervision of local nurses. In each household, all suspected cases of epilepsy were identified. In each health district, five communities were randomly selected for a second census by trained health personnel (research team). The results of the two censuses were compared for verification purposes.
resultsA total of 53,005 people was registered in the 190 communities surveyed with 794 (1.4%) individuals identified as suspected cases of epilepsy (SCE) by the CDDs. In the 15 communities where the SCE census was verified, the average ratio between the number of suspected cases of epilepsy reported in a community by the research team and that reported by the CDDs was 1.1; this ratio was < 0.8 and > 1.2 in 6 communities.
conclusionsThe results of this study suggest that CDDs, who are present in about 200,000 communities in 31 Sub Saharan African countries where onchocerciasis is endemic, can be successfully used to assess epilepsy prevalence, and therefore map epilepsy in many African countries.
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