The Chinese Way

Schistosomiasis, known in Africa as Bilharzia and in China as mail fever, affects 200 million people in over 70 nations. It is a less spectacular, and therefore a lest well-known disease than malaria or cholera, but in its own quieter way it is probably the most serious off all the major diseases of the Third World. As a debilitating disease, causing general ill health and listlessness its effect on economic development is enormous. As a progressive disease, causing the eventual disruption of the liver and spleen; it can kill.

The disease is caused by worms which live in water and which can penetrate the human body on contact. The worms then breed inside the liver and produce spined eggs which pass out of the body again in a the faeces and urine. The worms life-span can be up to 30 years and it can produce about 300 spined eggs a day. In areas where water supply and sanitation are inadequate, the faeces and urine containing the eggs, usually end up in the ponds, lakes and streams which are often the main source of water for washing, cooking, and drinking. There, the eggs hatch into larvae which enter small fresh-water snails and change into fork-tailed infective larvae which can penetrate the human skin and re-enter the body.

Dr Letitia Obeng, former Director of Ghana's Institute of Acquatic Biology and now a Senior Executive with the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi, has made a special study of the disease as part of UNEP's programme to find environmental ways of controlling it. She has recently returned from the People's Republic of China which, until recently, was one of the nations hardest hit by schitosomiasis. She was interviewed by the New Internationalist magazine.