The control of hookworm disease in Commonwealth Caribbean countries

► The hookworm programme saw the introduction and development of pubic health systems with units dedicated to health education (taking the message to the community using public lectures and films), environmental sanitation, public health legislation, and laboratory services which became the forerunner to the development of primary health care centres which are now permanent features in Ministries of Health in the Caribbean as well as other countries of the world. ► The upward economic and social mobility of the people enabled them to have modern privies, wearing of shoes even by farmers were also partly responsible for the reductions of infections. ► Further, the continuing ritual of mothers who now use new purgatives such as mebendazole, albendazole and flubendazole to purge their children also helped in reducing infections of hookworms and other geohelminths.