Question: What are the symptoms of Schistosomiasis and how does it affect the lives of the local people?

Anouk Gouvras answered on 19 Jun 2012:

Schistosomiasis is a chronic, debilitating disease. It is the eggs produced by a pair of schistosomes that cause the biggest damage although when first infected people can also get a skin rash and a bit of fever.
The main symptoms though depend on the species you are infected with. If it is Schistosoma mansoni aka intestinal schistosomiasis then the symptoms are usually chronic abdominal pain, bloody diarrhoea and fatigue, anaemia, malnutrition. This can then progress to swollen liver, swollen spleen, irreversible liver damage etc. The other common species infecting people in sub-Saharan AFrica is called Schistosoma haematobium aka urogenital schistosomiasis and it affects the urinary system so the main symptom is blood in the urine again with chronic pain, fatigue, anaemia, malnutrition, growth stunting etc This can then progress too genital lesions, and bleeding, infertility, renal failure, bladder cancer etc.

It is thought that today over 200 million people are infected with schistosomes world-wide (85% of who live in sub-Saharan Africa), over 120 million people show symptoms of the disease. And around 700 million people, in 76 countries, risk getting infected.

Watch this video by scientists at Stanford (Shelly Xie and Michael Hsieh) which explains the affect it can have on people: http://youtu.be/lo1cRLdqKq4