Schistosomiasis is Africa's second most common parasitic disease. Less than 20 years ago, over 200 million were infected. In many high-risk areas the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI) has been helping to tackle the disease by offering treatments to millions of children. This book tells the story of a man, Alan Fenwick, who founded the SCI to control the worms and snails and so improve the lives of many burdened with the disease as well as reducing the numbers infected. Over this period SCI and the Ministries of Health and Education in 16 countries delivered over 220 million treatments. Treatment coverage of up to 75% has been achieved. Widely recognised as a cost-effective and successful intervention, SCI's knock-on effects include improving overall physical health, school attendance and future prospects for millions of people.

Apart from malaria, schistosomiasis is the most prevalent parasitic infection in the world. It affects more than 200 million people in 76 tropical and subtropical countries, causing great suffering and resulting in thousands of deaths. Written by world authorities, this book examines many aspects of the biology, pathology, and control of the schistosoma parasite. Ranging in topic from infection in Pharaonic Egypt, through DNA relationships and biological systems, to advances in development of vaccines against the parasite, this book is a comprehensive text written for researchers and medical professionals alike.

"Produced under the overall direction and supervision of Dr. Lorenzo Savioli (Director) and Dr. Denis Daumerie (Programme Manager), WHO Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases"--Back of title page.

Helminths include one of the most diverse and geographically widespread groups of parasites which infect humans and animals. About 100 species have been reported from humans, usually producing asymptomatic infection or mild symptoms. However, about 20 species are of public health importance causing severe or even fatal infections. In many parts of Africa parasitic helminths are responsible for enormous economic losses, hampering rural development programmes and reducing the pace of economic growth. Many parasitic helminths are either zoonoses (diseases naturally transmitted between vertebrate animals and man) or have evolved from animal parasites. The modification of the environment through wars, famine and the ever expanding and increasingly mobile human population brings people into close contact with new environments and wildlife species which makes the study and control of zoonoses of special interest and complexity. In Africa, the transmission of helminth parasites is highly influenced by the ever changing social and cultural differences between diverse groups of peoples and their interaction with wild and domestic animals. It is not surprising, therefore, that approaches to the study and control of parasitic zoonoses require intersectoral cooperation between physicians, veterinarians, parasitologists, zoologists, demographers, anthropologists, engineers and economists to provide the breadth of knowledge and expertise required to develop our understanding of these diseases and to devise methods for their control. This book provides a selective compilation of parasitic helminths, many of which are zoonoses which create important economic and public health problems in Africa.

Human schistosomes (blood flukes) are digenetic trematodes that spend the adult part of their life cycle in humans and a further part in aquatic snails. Despite advances in chemotherapy, schistosomiasis is still a significant infection in the populations of several countries in the tropics. This book replaces a previous volume Schistosomiasis: Epidemiology, Treatment and Control (Heinemann, 1982) by Jordan and Webbe. All chapters have been rewritten by internationally renowned workers. Ultrasound, expected to aid identification of early disease in the field and increase our understanding of its evolution, is discussed in a new chapter. Others, each with an extensive bibliography, review the parasites and their snail intermediate hosts, epidemiology, clinical manifestations and pathology, diagnosis, immunology, drugs and patient management and control. Limitations of the role of chemotherapy in morbidity control are discussed and the need for flexibility in control interventions in the varied epidemiological situations is stressed. An interdisciplinary approach may be necessary to reduce transmission by appropriate measures against the snail intermediate host, and to implement public health measures, including the provision of safe water (with many other medical and social benefits) and health education. This comprehensive volume is for public health workers involved in the prevention and control of the disease, for physicians, and for students and teachers of many disciplines. It also provides a reference book for health planners, social anthropologists, health educators, water and sanitary engineers and others engaged in improving health in the tropics. Physicians in temperate countries will also find it a useful reference book as schistosomiasis, often acute, is being diagnosed more frequently in those returning from holidays in endemic areas.

Professor Farley describes how governments and organizations faced one particular tropical disease, bilharzia or schistosomiasis.

Reports on schistosomiasis epidemiology and clinical features in Africa and Brazil, and development of novel drugs that affect the worm tegument, and vaccine based on excretory-secretory products and Type 2 cytokines.

In October 1902, the reservoir of the first Aswan Dam filled, and Egypt's relationship with the Nile River forever changed. Flooding villages of historical northern Nubia and filling the irrigation canals that flowed from the river, the perennial Nile not only reshaped agriculture and the environment, but also Egypt's colonial economy and forms of subjectivity. Jennifer L. Derr follows the engineers, capitalists, political authorities, and laborers who built a new Nile River through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The river helped to shape the future of technocratic knowledge, and the bodies of those who inhabited rural communities were transformed through the environmental intimacies of their daily lives. At the root of this investigation lies the notion that the Nile is not a singular entity, but a realm of practice and a set of temporally, spatially, and materially specific relations that structured experiences of colonial economy. From the microscopic to the regional, the local to the imperial, The Lived Nile recounts the history and centrality of the environment to questions of politics, knowledge, and the lived experience of the human body itself.