Schistosomiasis is a parasitical disease spread by poor sanitation. It’s widespread and causes both acute and chronic injury. For decades, governments and donor nations have devoted countless dollars and hours to controlling this disease – mostly without success.
Epidemiologist Archie Clements from the University of Queensland in Australia wanted to know what works, what doesn’t and why. He looked at the example of control efforts in the West African country of Mali.
In the 1980s, the Malian government initiated a widespread program to control schistosomiasis. It repeated the program again between 2004 and 2006.
Clements examined data from both control efforts. He was able to create maps of the distribution of the disease before and after both programs and he found that the distribution of schistosomiasis after 2006 was similar to the distribution before the original 1980s control program.
“[This] suggests that even though that control program might have been very successful at reducing illness as a result of schistosomiasis in the population that they targeted, there has not been an ongoing effect in subsequent generations of Malians,” Clements says.
Sanitation Updates 