Health Buzz
I REMEMBER having a conversation with a colleague last year about how she refused to have her children receive a drug 'she did not know about' at school.
Health officials had been to the school offering all the children a pill which they said would prevent some disease or another and the school authority had not bothered to inform the parents.
"These people are just giving our children drugs and we do not know the effect these things will have on them later in life. Why do they always try new things on our children," she said.
To her, it did not matter that her children receiving that drug could protect them, not harm them.
She had no information about why they should be getting these drugs so often, or why it was important for them to get them.
So many people in the communities are in this same boat.
It became apparent that when the Ministry of Health and Child Care conducts mass drug administration programmes for children of school going age and adults, many are left in the dark.
For my colleague, the drug her children were supposed to receive was for the prevention of schistosomiasis, which is commonly known as bilharzia.
Of course, she knew what bilharzia is, but she did not think her children were at risk of getting it so she did not see the reason why they had to be treated.
Schistosomiasis is an acute and chronic disease caused by parasitic worms. It is transmitted when larval forms released by freshwater snails penetrate human skin during contact with infested water.
Bilharzia is among the 20 Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) identified by the World Health Organisation.
These are a diverse group of conditions that are caused by a variety of pathogens, including viruses, bacteria, parasites, fungi and toxins.
The diseases have been around for years and years and can cause devastating health, social and economic consequences to more than one billion people in the world.
Today we focus on why it is important to prevent bilharzia through these mass drug administrations.
Bilharzia is more prevalent in poor communities without access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation and it is estimated that at least 90 percent of those requiring treatment for schistosomiasis live in Africa.
While my colleague thought her children were safe, she never thought about how they could get infected.
Bilharzia is transmitted when people suffering from it contaminate freshwater sources with their excreta (urine and faecal matter) containing parasite eggs, which hatch in water. Once these parasites penetrate the skin and get into the body, the larvae develop into adult worms where they live in the blood vessels and the females release eggs.
Some of the eggs are passed out of the body in the faecal matter or urine to continue the parasite's life cycle, but others become trapped in body tissues, causing immune reactions and progressive damage to organs.
Since the disease mostly affects children, it can impair their growth, learning capabilities and lead to life-threatening conditions.
According to statistics, more than 240 million people worldwide require treatment and it is estimated that around 200 000 die from complications each year.
In Zimbabwe, the prevalence of schistosomiasis is estimated at 22 percent with 53 districts being said to be endemic for bilharzia.
More than 5 million people (35,6 percent of the total population) are in need of mass drug administration against the disease.
This confirms that the country's endemicity to bilharzia is high despite efforts that have been made to eliminate it.
While the annual mass drug administration exercise concentrates on children of school going age, studies done last year revealed that about 20,9 percent of adults aged 15 years and above also needed treatment for the disease, while 9,6 percent of children aged 5-14 years and 5,1 percent of children below the age of five were in need of the treatment as well.
So this shows why it is important for children, and at risk adults to be protected from the disease. Schistosomiasis is not only treatable; it can also be eliminated.
All forms of bilharzia can be treated effectively by the WHO-recommended medicine, praziquantel which is effective, safe and low-cost.
Even though re-infection may occur after treatment, the risk of developing severe disease is diminished and even reversed when treatment is initiated and repeated in childhood.
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The World Health Organisation launched a '2030 NTD Roadmap', providing guidance and a clear agenda for the elimination of NTDs like bilharzia between 2021 and 2023.
And Zimbabwe is part of the countries implementing this roadmap.
Government has been implementing initiatives that aim to achieve the goals set to eliminate this preventable disease.
And mass drug administration is part of the equation.
The country is currently preparing to launch a nationwide mass drug administration campaign in September to tackle the prevalent neglected tropical diseases (NTDs); bilharzia, soil transmitted helminths (intestinal worms), and lymphatic filariasis (LF).
The country was also the first to be selected to be part of the China Africa Cooperation to eliminate Schistosomiasis.
To achieve this, the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) is receiving support from the National Institute of Parasitic Diseases in China in several areas aimed at eradicating the disease.
As the NIHR director Professor Nicholas Midzi said last year, the proper implementation of Chinese strategies would put Zimbabwe in line to be the first country in the region to eliminate bilharzia.
