ABSTRACT
Since 2001, when the 54th World Health Assembly adopted a resolution to implement child-deworming programs in endemic countries, this has become the major approach to morbidity control for pediatric helminth infections. Deworming, which is typically carried out with a single dose of the anthelminthic drugs albendazole or mebendazole to simultaneously target hookworm and other soil-transmitted helminth infections (e.g., ascariasis and trichuriasis), has been shown to lead to improvements in child growth, development, and education, as well as improved pregnancy outcome when used during the antenatal period (5,6). However, concerns regarding the sustainability of deworming because of lower than expected efficacies of single-dose anthelminthics, especially with mebendazole, together with high rates of hookworm reinfection following treatment, and the potential for emergence of anthelminthic drug resistance have prompted the search for alternative control tools (12,13). The development of a safe and effective vaccine to prevent hookworm infection would therefore represent both an important public health breakthrough as well as a potentially effective poverty reduction measure (14). Ultimately, the successful development of a safe and effective human hookworm vaccine (‘‘the HHV’’) would represent a critical tool for achieving MDGs related to child and maternal health, poverty and hunger, and MDG 6, which is ‘‘to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases’’ (11).
