Control of Schistosoma mansoni in the Blue Nile Valley of western Ethiopia by mass chemotherapy and focal snail control: a primary health care experience

Abstract

A simplified combination of human mass treatment with oxamniquine and focal snail control has been applied in a local Schistosoma mansoni control programme in a primary health care setting in the Dalati and Agallu Metti areas of the Ethiopian Blue Nile Valley. Teams of local health personnel and farmers did the daily work under intermittent supervision. Monthly snail surveys near the major villages disclosed a seasonal pattern with many infected snails during the dry season in upper stagnant sections of tributary rivers (1000–1200 m altitude) with favourable temperatures, and few snails in the rainy season. The highest prevalences and intensities of human infection were found in the 15–19 year age group living in the lower altitudes around 700 m. 5067 individuals (50–80% of the local population) were treated with 20–40 mg oxamniquine per kg body weight during the rainy seasons of 1985 (Dalati) and 1986 (Agallu Metti). In the Dalati area cross sectional surveys in 1985 and 1986, before and after the mass treatment, showed a reduction in prevalence from 42·4% to 11·4%, while in the Agallu Metti area a stratified random sample showed a prevalence reduction from 65·4% in 1986 to 7·8% in 1987 and a reduction in the prevalence of moderate to heavy infection (>100 eggs per gram of stool) from 36·9% to 1·4%. Beginning in 1986 niclosamide was applied focally wherever infected snails were found and the monthly snail surveillance continued until 1989. As a result of this combined approach overall snail infection rates were reduced from 11·2% (Dalati) and 32% (Agallu Metti) to zero and 2% respectively. In 1989 the human prevalence was still only 8·6% in Agallu Metti. This programme has shown that it is feasible to control S. mansoni in these very remote localities through the primary health care system.