January 2000 media releases on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contribution to the University of Notre Dame for a five-year pilot program to research, treat and eliminate lymphatic filariasis in Haiti. Interview with Dr. Norbert Perera Dr. Perera has worked as a vascular surgeon with the Scarborough General Hospital since 1973. I started my surgical training in Sri Lanka where I came into contact with the condition as part of my normal general surgical practice. The filarial worm is transmitted by mosquitoes - similar to malaria. But there isn't the same drama with this condition as there is with malaria which kills.
Filariasis tends to leave people with chronic disabilities.
When the adult worm settles in the lymph glands, the scarring that follows creates chronic lymphatic obstruction, the same manifestation as congenital lymphedema, but an acquired version of it. Here I have seen a few people who have gotten it in their childhood in Guyana, for instance, and have had repeated episodes of acute filariasis. And they come here about 10 or 20 years later with the chronic manifestations of it. The disease is treatable - there are drugs which attack the smaller stages of the worm in the bloodstream. But once it has come to the chronic scarring stage, then the management is identical to any other kind of lymphedema.