Schistosomiasis morbidity and management of cases in Africa.

Schistosomiasis is one of the most prevalent parasitic infections and an important public health problem in many developing countries. The main early symptom if Schistosoma haematobium infection is hematuria, and S. mansoni infection causes bloody diarrhea. Current estimates of the number of individuals with symptoms and the burden of disease due to schistosoma infection lack detail and precision and are considered to be too low. Therefore we aimed at determining more accurate estimates using data from published field studies. We developed a method to associate prevalence of schistosoma infection with prevalence of morbidity in a population. In the second part of this thesis we explored the quality of schistosomiasis case management and determined the probability that patients with symptoms from S. haematobium or S. mansoni infection that report at the health system receive adequate treatment. The pre-requisits for schistosomiasis case management turned out to be less favourable in Ghana than in Mali and Senegal.