East China’s Jiangsu province has sent a five-member medical team to Zanzibar for schistosomiasis prevention and control on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative and the 60th anniversary of the dispatch of China’s medical team to Africa.
“I am currently at the Jiangsu Provincial Institute for Schistosomiasis Control. At 3:30 pm this afternoon, four schistosomiasis control experts and one logistics support staff from Jiangsu will travel to Zanzibar. The expert standing next to me is Professor Huang Yuzheng, the leader of this medical team”, Tang Anji, JSBC staff reporter, said.
“We have a total of 5 team members in this group. Each team member has worked and lived in Zanzibar Island for a period of time. In the next three years, we will send experts to Zanzibar in batches, and each batch of experts will be stationed in Zanzibar for one year, striving to achieve full coverage of schistosomiasis prevention and control for the entire population on the island of Pemba in Zanzibar. At the same time, we also hope to establish and train a professional team for schistosomiasis prevention and control in Zanzibar”, Huang Yuzheng, Deputy Director of the Global Health Center of the Jiangsu Institute for Schistosomiasis Control and Prevention, said.
Schistosomiasis is prevalent in 78 countries and regions in the tropics and subtropics. According to the World Health Organization, the number of schistosomiasis patients worldwide is approximately 200 million.
Zanzibar is a severe epidemic area of schistosomiasis. From 2017 to 2020, Jiangsu implemented the first phase of the technical cooperation project for assisting in the prevention and control of schistosomiasis in Zanzibar. The pilot area of the project achieved a decrease in the infection rate of schistosomiasis patients from 8.92% to 0.64%. The project was also included in the white paper "China's International Development Cooperation in the New Era" as a typical case.
The Jiangsu medical team that went to Zanzibar this time also brought domestically produced treatment drugs and reagents to assist in the treatment and screening of local schistosomiasis.
