The evolving schistosomiasis agenda 2017-2020 in Egypt: Moving from control toward final elimination

Abstract

Schistosomiasis is one of the most important diseases of humans in tropical and subtropical parts of the world, it is a chronic disease, it comes after malaria in socioeconomic and public health importance among parasitic diseases. It is estimated that about 779 million people are at risk of infection, about 240 million are infected, of whom 120 million are symptomatic and 20 million have serious consequences (WHO, 2014). This infection has been recorded in Egypt from early pharaonic times (3200 B.C.) by the demonstration of Schistosome eggs and circulating Schistosome antigens in mummies. After the discovery of the parasite's life cycle in1915, Egypt started to fight against the disease by implementing pilot projects using either snail control or chemotherapy. In Egypt, between 1989 and 1996, about 2.5 million schistosomiasis cases were diagnosed and treated, mentioning that the prevalence of schistosomiasis was close to 40% in 1983 at the national level. The Ministry of Health and Population in Egypt has announced the start of a campaign to confirm the final elimination of schistosomiasis by 2020 after the ministry has achieved success in reducing the prevalence of schistosomiasis to about 0.2% by the end of 2016.

microRNAs in the Diagnosis of Human Schistosomiasis

“…Schistosomiasis is a chronic disease, it comes after malaria in public health and socioeconomic importance among parasitic diseases (1) , it is estimated that about 779 million people are at risk of infection and about 240 million are infected (WHO, 2014) (2) , the infection depends on water contact activities with some risk factors so schistosomiasis control program in the infected areas should be done upon to educate the population on risk factors as age, gender, education residence, and occupation (3) , Schistosomiasis infection has been eliminated in Iran, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia with an absence of newly recorded cases in the past few years (WHO, 2007) (4) . the overall prevalence S.haematobium and S.mansoni fell to less than 0.2% in Egypt (5) . Recently, diagnostic techniques have been developed for the detection of schistosomiasis, ranging from basic microscopic detection to molecular approaches, Questionnaire and chemical reagent strip for haematuria and proteinuria can be considered for the diagnosis of S. haematobium in areas with a high prevalence of infection (6,7) , the sum of Nuclepore membranes filtration technique and Centrifugation sedimentation technique results used as a gold standard to evaluate other techniques (8) .…”

Hematological Implications of Schistosomiasis: Experimental and Clinical Review

“…But the solid evidence is that morbidity due to schistosomiasis can be controlled when or where the necessary financial support exists in affected areas as occurred in China, Egypt and Brazil. However, elimination of such public health problem has proved difficult 7 but not impossible as the disease was eliminated in some countries as in Japan, Tunisia, Puerto Rico, Iran, Mauritius, Venezuela, Morocco, and most of the Caribbean 8 .…”