Pune: The Centre's move to extend the deadline for eliminating lymphatic filariasis by three years to 2020 may do little for Maharashtra as the state continues to record extreme cases of the disease.In the last 10 month, as many as 1,221 persons were found infected with microfilariae - the minute larva that enters a person's bloodstream and get passed on when a mosquito bites an infected person. Incidentally, the state had recorded 2,245 such cases throughout last year.In addition to these, another 132 people were diagnosed with chronic filarial swellings, the full-blown disease, causing disfigurement and disability among patients, the latest report of the state health department has revealed. Incidentally, 126 cases of the full-blown filariasis were recorded in the state last year.The rise in the full-blown filariasis cases is a serious concern as it indicates failure on the part of the state health machinery to treat these patients adequately, experts said."This rise only shows that patients found with early stage (minute larva) of the disease were not adequately treated," health activist Sanjeev Dabhade said."Lymphatic filariasis is a slow-progressing disease. There are no outbreaks and people do not succumb to it. But it may cripple them for life. The state government needs to scale up their surveillance work to find and treat every patient so that no patient progresses to the full-blown stage," Dabhade added.Nevertheless, health officials seemed optimistic about achieving the disease elimination within the revised deadline. "We are detecting and putting on treatment every case so that there is no false projection. The cases of microfilariae are mainly from state's six endemic districts — Thane, Nagpur, Nanded, Gadchiroli, Chandrapur and Gondia," M S Diggikar, joint director (vector-borne diseses), state health department, said.Diggikar said there were 17 districts endemic to filariasis earlier, which have comes down to six now. "There are certain challenges but we have made significant progress in reducing the case burden, which is within less than 1% rate in other districts. This is an achievement," Diggikar said.Atate entomologist Mahendra Jagtap said, "A patient found infected with microfilarie usually do not progress to full-blown stage if he/she completes four cycles of treatment in a year. However, despite persuasion and monitoring, patients skip treatment and develop the full-blown disease."

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