Trematode infections is transmitted when larval forms released by freshwater snails penetrate human skin during contact with infested water. An estimated 700 million people are at risk. #BeatNTDs
www.who.int
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The frequency of treatment is determined by the prevalence of infection in school-age children. In high-transmission areas, treatment may have to be repeated every year for a number of years. Monitoring is essential to determine the impact of control interventions.
The aim is to reduce disease morbidity and transmission: periodic treatment of at-risk populations will cure mild symptoms and prevent infected people from developing severe, late-stage chronic disease. However, a major limitation to schistosomiasis control has been the limited availability of praziquantel. Data for 2016 show that 34.4% of people requiring treatment were reached globally, with a proportion of 51.6% of school-aged children requiring preventive chemotherapy for schistosomiasis being treated.
Praziquantel is the recommended treatment against all forms of schistosomiasis. It is effective, safe, and low-cost. Even though re-infection may occur after treatment, the risk of developing severe disease is diminished and even reversed when treatment is initiated and repeated in childhood.
Schistosomiasis control has been successfully implemented over the past 40 years in several countries, including Brazil, Cambodia, China, Egypt, Mauritius, Islamic Republic of Iran, Oman, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. There is evidence that schistosomiasis transmission was interrupted in Morocco. In Burkina Faso, Niger, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Yemen, it has been possible to scale up schistosomiasis treatment to the national level and have an impact on the disease in a few years. An assessment of the status of transmission is being made in several countries.
Over the past 10 years, there has been scale-up of treatment campaigns in a number of sub-Saharan countries, where most of those at risk live.