Schistosomiasis
CLAIRE MEDLIN - The APES Weekly News - DEC. 14, 2015
Instilling Fear
This disease is known to affect almost 240 million people worldwide each year. These people are not of any specific age and of African descent due to the lack of hygeine and clean water in many locations in Africa. Because of the low mortality rate for these high numbers of infection, anywhere from 20,000 to 200,000 deaths per year, this disease is not considered an immediate problem. The need for immunization is now at an all time high and treatment is lackinng in many areas.
How Do We Know If We're Safe?
Signs To Watch For
Some basic signs of this disease are blood in urine, blood in stool, enlargement of the kidneys and spleen, coughing, anemia, malnutrition, and Eosinophilia or and extremely elevated white blood cell count. If you or your doctor begin to notice these, or if you have any of the following symptoms: fever, fatigue, abdominal pain, and pain while passing urine, please see your health provider immediately to have further tests run.
Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prevention
Based off of your symptoms and signs your healthcare professional can tell you if you have this disease or simply a bad case of a UTI or the stomoach bug. They will test samples of feces, urine or your blood to see if they can detect eggs of the parasites or anitgens. To treat this disease your doctor will most ike give you an anti-parisital medicine called Praziquantel that is taken for one to two days.
The best way to prevent yourself from getting this disease is to stay clear of sites where parasites are likely to be, drink water you know is clean, keep good hygeine and control the snail population.