Schistosomiasis transmission and control in China

In the last 60 years, great progress has been made in controlling and preventing schistosomiasis in China. However, due to the ecosystem changes caused by the construction of the Three Gorges Dams and the South-north Water Conversion Project, the effects of climate change, the scarcity of a highly sensitive surveillance and response system, schistosomiasis is still considered as a major public health problem and is listed among the top infectious diseases in the country prioritized for control and elimination. Based on the epidemiological pattern of schistosomiasis and ecological characteristics of the vector snail, endemic areas of schistosomiasis in China were categorized into three types: (i) plain region with waterway networks, (ii) mountainous and hilly regions, and (iii) marshland and lake regions. China aims to reach the criteria of transmission control threshold of less than 1% in the lake and marshland provinces and reach transmission interruption threshold in hilly provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan by the end of 2015. The purpose of this article is to use the deterministic model proposed in our earlier study in (Chen et al., 2010) to simulate the schistosomiasis infection data from other lake and marshland provinces, including Hunan, Jiangxi and Anhui. Our simulations demonstrate that the model can reasonably mimic the schistosomiasis infection data from these lake and marshland provinces. Thus, similar control and prevention measures can be designed and proposed for these provinces. We will also try to use the model to simulate the schistosomiasis infection data from Sichuan and Yunnan provinces in the mountainous and hilly regions where cattle farming is not as popular and important as in the lake and marshland provinces and find out that different control and prevention strategies are required.