环球英语 — 74：A Forgotten Disease: Schistosomiasis

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Thank you for joining us for today’s Spotlight 1. I’m Joshua Leo

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And I’m Ryan Geertsma. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand no matter where in the world they live.

Voice 1

Water is one the most important things people need to live. We use it to cook, to wash, and to drink. But water can also be the cause of many problems. Floods can damage cities. Heavy rains can cause terrible land slides. Tsunamis 2 can destroy towns on the coast.

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But the most dangerous water is dirty water. Dirty water can carry very harmful diseases. And these diseases affect millions of people around the world. Today we will discuss one of these diseases. Today’s Spotlight is on Schistosomiasis.

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You probably have not heard of Schistosomiasis before. The World Health Organization says that Schistosomiasis is a neglected tropical disease. That is, schistosomiasis affects many people around the world. But most people do not know it exists. Diseases such as leprosy, lymphatic filariasis, and trachoma are also on this list.

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Neglected tropical diseases are forgotten diseases. But two groups are working to change this. The World Health Organization and the Neglected Tropical Disease Coalition 3 are working to teach people about these harmful diseases. The more people know about these diseases, the easier it will be to prevent and treat them.

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Today, over two hundred million [200,000,000] people suffer from schistosomaisis. And over six hundred million [600,000,000] people are at risk. It is a tropical disease. People in warm climates are most likely to get it. And it is most often found in sub-Saharan Africa. Eighty [80] percent of schistosomiasis sufferers live there. But it is also found in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

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Some diseases can kill a person. But there are other diseases that make life painful. Schistosomiasis is this kind of disease. Schistosomiasis causes many different problems in a person’s body. But to understand what happens to a person’s body, we must first know how a person gets schistosomiasis.

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Schistosomiasis is caused by a very small organism. This organism lives in dirty water. If a person’s skin touches this dirty water, that person is at risk. The organisms may enter his body. The organisms sense movement from a person. They like the chemicals from a person’s body. The organisms also produce a chemical. This chemical lets them enter a person’s body.

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The organism moves through the body, from the skin, to the lungs, to the liver. There, it feeds on red blood cells. When both male and female organisms meet in the liver, they reproduce 4. The female organism releases eggs into the person’s body. This is where the serious problems start.

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These eggs enter different parts of the person’s body. They enter the intestines 5. And they enter the bladder. This is where the body keeps liquid waste, urine. Some of these eggs are expelled 6 from the body, in human waste. Over their life, these eggs will infect many other people.

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But not all of the eggs leave the body. Some are trapped in the digestive system and the urinary system. The digestive system is the body’s organs that process food - including the stomach, liver, and intestines. It also includes the systems that process solid human waste. The urinary systems process liquids, in particular, liquid waste. The eggs trapped in these systems begin to cause problems. The person’s body reacts to the eggs. It tries to protect itself. And by protecting itself, it causes other problems.

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The problems depend on where the eggs are in his body. The body’s reaction will slowly destroy the stomach, intestines, liver, bladder, and kidneys 7. A sufferer may have stomach pain. He may have diarrhoea. It may be painful to pass liquid waste. He may see blood in his liquid waste, or in his solid waste. Because his stomach is damaged, he may not be able to get all of the nutrients 8 from food. These nutrients are very important to good health. So a sufferer may become very tired, or have a fever. The body’s reaction can even damage nerves and the brain. Schistosomiasis is not a disease that kills the person, but it makes life very painful.

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Doctor Julie Gutman understands the dangers of schistosomiasis personally. She is working for health officials in Nigeria. She travels to villages to see how many children there have schistosomiasis. This is so that the Nigerian government can create treatment plans. One of the villages she visited was Fobur. She worked with the village leader there. First, they asked children to come for testing. Dr. Gutman needed children who were ten [10] to fifteen [15] years old.

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The test was simple. The children just needed to put their solid waste in a small container. In other villages, the children did not return the containers. The containers were so nice! So now Doctor Gutman gives the children a gift when they return the container.

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Fifteen [15] boys and fifteen [15] girls in Fobur returned waste samples. Doctor Gutman tested the waste. She found that eleven [11] of the children had schistosomiasis. If more than thirty percent of the children tested in a village have the disease, Doctor Gutman gives the entire village medicine. This means that shistosomiasis was an important health concern. If it is under thirty percent, other health problems are more important. But schistosomiasis was a big health problem for Fobur. More than thirty percent of the children had schistosomiasis. So the village will be receiving treatment.

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Only some villages receive treatment because the medicine can be very expensive for developing countries. The medicine costs twenty [20] cents per child every year. This may seem like a small amount. But there are millions of infected children. The total cost would be hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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Treatment is important. But like most tropical diseases, prevention is the easiest way to deal with schistosomiasis. Prevention of schistosomiasis often means killing 9 one kind of animal. Snails 10 are small, soft creatures with hard shells. They live in the water. The organisms that cause schistosomiasis live in these snails first.

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Communities can add particular chemicals to water to kill these snails. Doing this will also kill the organisms causing schistosomiasis. Recent studies have also found that particular animals will also kill these snails if they are added to the contaminated 11 water.

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The other way to prevent infection is to stay away from dirty water. People in affected 12 areas should not swim or wash in dirty water. They should always drink safe, clean water. The water for cleaning should always be boiled for five minutes.

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Schistosomiasis can be prevented. It can be treated. The more people know about schistosomiasis, the easier it will be to stop it. The World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control care about people affected by schistosomiasis. They have marked it as a target of opportunity. They believe that if enough people work together, all of the neglected tropical diseases can be stopped.