Fig. 4

Predicted Mf and Ag prevalence for the population aged 5 years and above, prior to MDA (a & b) and 1 year after the required treatment duration (c & d). Antigenaemia is assumed to be detectable if at least one male or female worm is present in the host, but the detection rate increases with the number of adult worms (hypothesis 2). The boxes show the 25th and 75th percentiles of the distribution of the prevalence values and the horizontal line across the box is the median prevalence. The whiskers extend to 1.5 times the height of the box (i.e. the interquartile range, IQR) or, if no case/row has a value in that range, to the minimum or maximum values. If the data are distributed normally, approximately 95 % of the data are expected to lie between the inner fences. Values more than three IQR’s from the end of a box are labelled as extreme, denoted with an asterisk (*). Values more than 1.5 IQR’s but less than 3 IQR’s from the end of the box are labelled as outliers (o). The boxes combine information from the ~99 % runs ending in elimination and the ~1 % runs that did not achieve the target. The red dots indicate the prevalence levels for the few runs that did not result in elimination