Schistosomiasis: Bilharziasis, By Theodore Bilharz

Schistosomiasis is also known as bilharziasis in respect to the German physician Theodore Bilharz who first described the cause of urinary schistosomiasis in 185, is second only to malaria in public health importance. The first doctor who described the entire life cycle of the disease was Brazilian parasitologist Piraja da Silva in 1908. The first known case of infection was discovered in 2014, in a child who lived 6,200 years ago. It was a common cause of death for Ancient Egyptians in the Greco-Roman period. It is a disease of poverty that leads to chronic ill-health. The infection is acquired when people come in contact with fresh water infested with the larval forms of parasitic blood flukes known as schistosomes. The schistosomes live in the veins where it drains the urinary tract and intestines. Majority of the eggs they lay are trapped in the tissues and
It is hoped that better success can be achieved sooner.
However, four national control programmes have demonstrated that concerted control efforts together with economic development can reduce morbidity to levels. The current choice of drug, praziquantel reverses pathology in as little as 6 months after treatment of S. haematobium infections, the cost of the drug has reduced over the past 19 years. This drug has been safely co-administered with albendazole and ivermectin in areas where it has been used separately for preventive chemotherapy. But concerns still remain over the potential threat of the emergence of the parasites that are resistant to praziquantel.
The WHO strategy on the use of anthelmintic drugs now makes it possible to control schistosomiasis in poor communities in conjunction with interventions against lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis and soil transmitted helminthiasis.

SCHISTOSOMIASIS IN TANZANIA FOR