Government launches battle on bilharzia parasite

The Niger government has launched a campaign of free treatment for the bilharzia parasite, which infects one quarter of the country’s 12 million people. The World Health Organisation estimates that some 200,000 people die in sub-Saharan Africa every year of bilharzia, a disease caused by parasitic worms or schistosomes. Though malaria and AIDS kill many millions more Africans each year than the parasitic disease, untreated bilharzia can weaken people’s resistance to other diseases as well as cause fatigue and liver and kidney damage. “Bilharzia can cause urinary problems, blood can accompany urine, it leaves people with renal complications and causes sterility and can increase contraction of sexually transmitted diseases,” government health technician Hamsatou Hassane, told IRIN. The government announced on national radio on Monday its drive to distribute medications that kill the parasite -- which grow up to one centimetre long and live in the veins. It was not immediately clear how long the government campaign will run. De-worming medications have to be repeated every six months to prevent re-infection. Distributions will be concentrated in the west of the country, in the Tillabery, Dosso and Niamey regions close to the Niger River, whose populations are most affected by the disease. Bilharzia, also known as schistosomiasis, is caused by infestation by a type of flatworm, or fluke (parasite). Fluke larvae are released by freshwater snails which then penetrate human skin and mature into adults in the veins of the host. The free oral medicines that kill schistosomes and other worm infections will be given principally to children, who are most vulnerable to infection, in schools and at health centres. Bilharzia is endemic across sub-Saharan Africa, though a child can be de-wormed for lees than 50 cents, according to WHO estimates. Niger is the poorest country in the world ranking at the bottom of the UN’s Human Development Index. In the vast, mostly desert country of 1,267,000 square kilometres, 55 percent of the population do not have access to clean drinking water, according to the ministry of health. Some 73 percent of Nigeriens cannot read or write and 80 percent live a rural existence in a country which has a perennial problem of food insecurity and child malnutrition.