YAOUNDE, 13 June 2008 (IRIN) - “We found that 32 percent of the inhabitants of Mballa I-Dragage, a very high class residential area minutes from the centre of Yaounde, are infected with bilharzia,” said Louis-Albert Tchuem Tchuenté, president of the national programme against bilharzia (PNLSHI).

“We never imagined that it would spread to such a high-class area as that - it is very worrying, and if it is so bad there, imagine how bad it is in poorer areas too,” he said. “Urban bilharzia must not be ignored.”

According to PNLSHI, bilharzia infections were rampant in poor areas of Yaounde since at least 2006. The larvae is spread by bathing or swimming in polluted water, but is mainly found in rural and informal areas where sanitation facilities are poorest.

“There are many factors favouring the spread of this illness in Yaounde,” Tchuem Tchuenté said, pointing to toilets which drain directly into drinking water sources, and children playing in open sewers, as his principle concerns.

“All it takes is for the excrement of an infected person to end up in the river and for that to be ingested by shellfish or mollusks which are then ingested by people.”

Other common means of transmission are poor maintenance of water and sanitation infrastructure, informal settlements in the city mixing with formal settlements, and people moving to the city from the countryside, he said.

“Most infected people are still ignorant about this disease, Tchuem Tchuenté said, adding that education campaigns in the Loum region in western Cameroon had cut infection rates from 63 percent in 2000 to 3 percent in 2007.

[16 Jun 2008 11:56]

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