The Chinese government plans to control the spread of schistosomiasis in four years and eliminate the disease in the next decade, according to a latest government document.

Working to eliminate the disease, provincial governments will cover the medical fees of patients with the disease who are in the late stages, according to the plan from the Ministry of Health.

Carried by freshwater snails, schistosomiasis, or acute snail fever, is a fatal parasitic disease that attacks humans' blood and liver.

The Ministry of Health's statistics indicate an increase in cases of the disease in China. China had 843,000 registered schistosomiasis patients at the end of 2003, and 24,000 of them were at the late stage of the disease. This is 22 percent more than that in 2002.

East China's Jiangxi Province has suffered serious outbreak of schistosomiasis since the flooding disaster in 1998. Currently there are still more than 100,000 schistosomiasis patients in the province, including about 4,000 in the middle and late stages of the disease. The provincial government has just issued a specific plan to cover all the medical fees for the schistosomiasis patients who are in the late stages.

Five provinces and municipalities in China's east and south, Guangdong, Shanghai, Fujian, Guangxi and Zhejiang, recently also launched a campaign against the outbreak of schistosomiasis.

These regions saw an outbreak of the disease from 1985 and 1995,which has dwindled in recent years. The provincial governments hope that the campaign will prevent a rebound of the epidemic.

The schistosomiasis is mainly in spread in provinces along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, as well as those provinces south of the river. Chronic schistosomiasis patients, which account for most who contract the disease, experience high fever, weakness of the limbs and severe stiffness of the joints.

China once had the disease contained in these areas, but an increasing number of cases have been reported in recent years due to a lack of proper prevention measures and frequent floods.

Currently, 43 counties in seven Chinese provinces have failed to control the disease and some 38 counties previously free of the epidemic have seen it expanding, said the Ministry of Health.

In the coming years, China will work to improve people's awareness and prevention of schistosomiasis infection, change traditional farming method and lifestyle, screen rural residents and animals infected with the disease and offer appropriate medical treatment, said the ministry.

(Xinhua News Agency January 10, 2005)