Celebrating 100th anniversary of CPC | Chinese expert team lowers incidence of schistosomiasis in Tanzania’s Zanzibar

Tanzania's Zanzibar has suffered from schistosomiasis for many years. 

Chinese schistosomiasis experts sent to Zanzibar for the disease control carried out urine screening in 2017 and they found out, with heavy hearts, that local children looked normal but many of them were already severely infected with the disease. 

If the children hadn't received treatment, they would have died. Chinese experts walked around villages every day conducting an epidemiological survey. When it was raining and roads were wet and slippery, the experts even couldn't wear shoes to walk. They walked on rocky mountain roads with bare feet and some villages were not even reachable by road so the experts needed to walk slowly across terrain for more than 20 kilometers to get there. Every time, they wouldn't leave until they saw the villagers, and especially the children, take their medicine.

For more than three years, the expert team has screened over 30,000 locals for schistosomiasis, treated more than 6,000 patients, investigated and brought under control 600 schistosomiasis-polluted water environments, carried out health education for more than 40,000 people and established a water supply project. 

The Bulinus in pilot zones were eliminated totally and in areas covered by the project the incidence of the disease has been reduced to below 1 percent of the population, winning high appraisal from experts of the World Health Organization and gratitude from the local people.