Fig. 1

Diagram of the planned study arms for the SCORE cohort studies. As part of the larger SCORE randomized trials studying MDA delivery options for communities with endemic S. mansoni or S. haematobium infections [12], seven and eight year-old children residing in villages randomized into each of two SCORE project study arms were enrolled in prospective cohort studies of Schistosoma infection-related morbidities. In Arm A, communities are to receive yearly community-wide MDA. In Arm B, treatment will be given to school age children every other year, with drug ‘holidays’ in Year 2 and Year 4. The present paper reports on baseline pre-treatment data from Year 1; follow up examinations are planned and will be reported for Year 3 and Year 5 in later publications