SHANGHAI: Top health officials and experts have called for more efforts to prevent and control schistosomiasis, also known as snail fever, which is threatening the health of thousands of people and livestock in China.
　　Snail fever is a disease that affects human beings and other mammals. They can be infected by the blood fluke in snail-infested environments, which can destroy the liver, resulting in death, and can leave children as dwarfs.

Since the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, China has made great achievements in the fight against the disease, which was an unconquerable menace to human beings for hundreds of years in the country, said Yin Dakui, vice-minister of the Ministry of Health.

The number of people infected by the disease has been cut from 12 million in 1949 to 695,000 in 2000, and of infected cattle from 1.2 million to 59,000.

At the same time, the area inhabitated by the snails, which are the only hosts for blood flukes, has dropped from 14.8 million square kilometres to 3.45 million square kilometres.

In China, the control of schistosomiasis has been given high priority by the government. In endemic areas, the costs of fighting the disease are all borne by the government, usually at no cost to the farmers.

However, serious challenges still exist in the prevention and control of the disease, the vice-minister said yesterday at the opening ceremony of the International Symposium on Schistosomiasis.

In China, the disease is still prevalent in 108 counties, most of which are economically backward.

These counties are mainly distributed in the lake region of the three provinces along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangxi, and in the mountainous regions of Sichuan and Yunnan provinces.

Experts estimated that more than 22 million people are at risk of being infected by the disease.

Killing the snails and curing infected people and animals are the two basic challenges, said Jiang Qingwu, director of the Institute of Parasitic Diseases of the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine.

The problem is that there are so many infected people and cattle and so many areas where the disease is endemic that the present control programme cannot be efficiently carried out because of the shortage of money and technology.

Currently the disease can be cured in its early stages, but if it is not treated in time, it can become chronic, and it is much more severe when people become re-infected, experts said.

Furthermore, the spreading endemic areas as a result of frequent floods and the increasing mobility of population in recent years have made the control work more difficult.

Experts warn that the challenge is becoming tougher now with the arrival of this year's flood season, especially in South China, which will amplify the expansion of the snail.

From ChinaDaily.com.cn