One of the
most dangerous diseases in Africa that has a devastating impact on girls and
women is female genital schistosomiasis (FGS). Schistosomiasis, also known as
the “snail fever” is a parasitic disease carried by fresh water snails; it is transmitted
by contact with contaminated fresh water (through swimming, bathing, domestic
chores, etc.) It infects more than 400 million people in sub-Saharan Africa and
is the most common parasitic infection. FGS, however, has particular
repercussions for women’s health and reproductive system; it causes horrific
pain and bleeding in the uterus, cervix and lower genital tract. Along with
this unfortunate disease comes with social stigma and depression; 100 million
females suffer from this. Fortunately, there is a low-cost drug, Praziquantel,
which may prevent FGS and serve as a low-cost AIDS prevention strategy if
administered annually. The price will be eight cents a tablet with two to three
pills being given at a time. Having this disease can lead to AIDS as well.
There
needs to be more medical research to learn more about this form of disease,
people also need to be educated on what causes the situation. People need to
know that this doesn’t come from a woman being promiscuous and that it in fact
comes from a water source. Another thing that needs to be worked on is the poor
quality of water. The World Health Organization (WHO) along with other
organizations need to get together to improve on the quality of water sources
for the community and help them get knowledge on how to properly store and discard
unclean water. My only concern about this situation is about the medication,
how can we know about it being effective if little is known about the
situation? I believe that there needs to be knowledge being given to the women
on how to prevent this. A woman is not going to take a pill for something she
doesn’t even know what it does or what she has going on with her body. This
goes for the entire population; it is known that anyone can receive a form of
schistosomiasis from the unclean water source, so there not only needs to be a
prevention method for women, but men as well. Still a very low cost treatment,
but still not a affordable one amongst people who live in poverty—which is a
large portion of the population. A way to gain control of this disease is by
reducing transmission of the parasite, this can be done by eliminating the
snail intermediate hosts. There is a vaccine being made but it is not effective
for human use, it is currently in the early stages of development by the Sabin
Institute.
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