China will increase resources to contain the spread of schistosomiasis within the next four to five years and hope to wipe the disease out in another seven to eight years. Vice Premier Wu Yi unveiled the targets during last week’s national conference on snail fever held in Yueyang City, Hunan Province.

Schistosomiasis, or snail fever, is a parasitic disease of the liver, gastrointestinal tract and bladder. The disease is caused by a worm, or fluke, which enters a person’s body from infested polluted water. The larval forms of the parasitic worm live in freshwater snails.

In the early stages, infected persons experience flu-like symptoms, with fever, chills, sweating and cough. Patients with chronic infection may suffer severe damage to bladder, liver, lungs, bowel wall and nervous system.

The disease was once rampant in China’s southern rural areas. The country managed to contain it until the huge floods on the Yangtze River in 1998, when snail fever began to reappear. Wu said prevention measures have been inadequate, and describes the situation as grave.

President Hu Jintao also called for coordinated efforts to get the life-threatening epidemic.

The vice premier presented a package of measures to fight the disease, including checking the source of infection, cutting off transmission routes, protecting people susceptible to the disease and improving monitoring.

She called for efforts to improve awareness and capacity to prevent infection, transform traditional farming methods and lifestyles that add to risk, and to identify infected rural residents and animals and provide them with appropriate medical treatment.

Efforts should also be made to provide clean water for farmers and change night soil disposal methods to curb the spread of the disease.

While carrying out water conservancy and afforestation projects, local governments should clean up the environment to kill the oncomelania snails, which are the intermediate hosts of the flukes.

The vice premier promised free drugs to rural people infected by the disease as well as people and animals identified as major groups susceptible to the disease, while providing poverty-stricken areas with subsidies to buy oncomelania killers.

She also called on scientists to continue their research and increase international exchange and cooperation so as to make breakthroughs in the prevention and control of the disease in three to five years.

(Xinhua News Agency May 24, 2004)