Control of Taeniasis/Cysticercosis

Question 1

What are public and private goods?

Answer 1

Public - available to everyone at no extra cost. They are non-rival and non-excludable.

Private - the opposite. Use of them may affect use of them by other people and it may be easy to exclude certain groups from using them.

Question 2

What is an externality?

Answer 2

A cost or benefit incurred by a party that did not choose to incur that cost or benefit.

Question 3

Why is this more applicable to public health?

Answer 3

It allows assessment of the grey areas between public and private goods. It evaluates whether a zoonotic control intervention would be adopted by the private sector.

Question 4

What are transaction costs?

Answer 4

The costs of doing buisness e.g. obtaining information prior to making a deal, negotiating contracts and monitoring/policing a bargain.

Question 5

What is moral hazard?

Answer 5

Information costs can be included in transaction costs. The moral hazard refers to one party taking risks (e.g. concealing information) because the risk will not affect them.

Question 6

Why is it hard for the government to control food health?

Answer 6

All of the processing is done by the private sector. The government can provide policies and laws but there has to be adequate testing and enforcement at all of the stages.

Question 7

What are important considerations in cystercercosis control?

Answer 7

Pigs/products can travel long distances
Undetected cyts and undercooked meat will lead to infection
families with an infected family member are at high risk of getting cycstercercosis and neurocystercercosis.

Question 8

What is the level of moral hazard?

Answer 8

It is very high.

Question 9

What are the control options for this disease?

Answer 9

Avoid pig access to human faeces (latrine/housed pigs)
Treatment of humans
Treatment of pigs
Vaccination of pigs
Condemnation of carcasses

Question 10

What are the costs of using latrines?

Answer 10

Design (affordability)
Building cost
Maintenance
training
enforcement (peer pressure)

Question 11

What needs to be considered if changing the management system of pigs?

Answer 11

Building, maintenance and design
Feed, husbandry, genetics
Training of people in husbandry practices

Question 12

What are the problems of a human treatment program?

Answer 12

Cost of drugs
Enforcement
Delivery (storage, transport etc.)

Question 13

Are there additional concerns for pig treatment/vaccination?

Answer 13

Legal status

Enforcement needs to be sustained to be effective

Question 14

How can compliance with condemnation be improved?

Answer 14

Payment of workers to do the job

Question 15

Why is condemnation costly?

Answer 15

Costs of disposal of waste.

Question 16

How does cystercercosis impact on pig production?

Answer 16

There is no report that there are losses when the animal is alive. However, there are losses associated with reduced cost of meat for live animals (tongue test) and dead. The carcass could be returned to the farmer who may then eat it and become infected.

Question 17

What are the costs of human disease?

Answer 17

Nothing too serious, may even protect against bowel cancer. But neurocystercercosis can be lethal and drug treatment can lead to formation of calcified cyts which still cause pathology.

Question 18

What are the levels of impact of cystercercosis?

Answer 18

Producers suffer through poor market access
Consumers suffer through disease
General public may suffer from faecal contamination of water or plants.

Question 19

Why are animals important to peoples in the Andean valleys in bolivia?

Answer 19

Home consumption, money for small and large expenditure.

Question 20

Why did farmers want oxfendazole and why couldn’t they get it?

Answer 20

It removed parasites and improved growth rates as well as improving marketabilty and meat price as there was no cysts in the meat.

Question 21

Why would such a drug be unlikely to impact on overall prevalence of the disease?

Answer 21

Only a couple of pigs fattened at a time and the rest fend for themselves so they would still harbour the infection.

Question 22

What might drug treatment be combined with and why?

Answer 22

Vaccination. Without this the parasite may find it very easy to spread through a naive population with a greater virulence than before.