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In 2001, Urbani and Palmer published a review of the epidemiological situation of helminthiases in the countries of the Western Pacific Region of the World Health Organization indicating the control needs in the region. Six years after this inspiring article, large-scale preventive chemotherapy for the control of helminthiasis has scaled up dramatically in the region. This paper analyzes the most recent published and unpublished country information on large-scale preventive chemotherapy and summarizes the progress made since 2000. Almost 39 million treatments were provided in 2006 in the region for the control of helminthiasis: nearly 14 million for the control of lymphatic filariasis, more than 22 million for the control of soil-transmitted helminthiasis, and over 2 million for the control of schistosomiasis. In general, control of these helminthiases is progressing well in the Mekong countries and Pacific Islands. In China, despite harboring the majority of the helminth infections of the region, the control activities have not reached the level of coverage of countries with much more limited financial resources. The control of food-borne trematodes is still limited, but pilot activities have been initiated in China, Lao People's Democratic Republic, and Vietnam.

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Vietnam is one of the countries in the world most affected by Soil Transmitted Helminthiasis. Large areas of the country, like the Northern uplands or the North and Central Coast, are reported as having 75-85% of infection for Ascaris lumbricoides, 38-40% infection for Trichuris trichiura and 27-28% for hookworm infections. Periodical de-worming of schoolchildren is therefore strongly recommended.The managers of the Helminth Control Programme decided to apply a number of measures to improve cost-efficiency in order to deworm as many schoolchildren as possible with the availability of limited financial resources.This low-cost intervention targeted over 2.7 million schoolchildren. Coverage was estimated at over 95% and the cost for each treated child was 0.03 USD, which represents a saving of about 50% of costs presently reported in literature. The article describes the measures applied that resulted in cost containment but maintained high treatment coverage.

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