Ethical Issues In Combating Schistosomiasis

Combating schistosomiasis is a challenge as we can vaccinate against it or clean up water sources. Despite this though there have efforts to combat it, but if the data is anything to go by the battles have not been the most successful. A study done by Pimentel at al (2007:625), schistosomiasis is currently “infecting more than 200 million people, with death estimates of up to 200,000 per year” and that is continuing to grow. Many of the programs combating this disease are usually for ethical or developmental reason as they wish to bring down mortality or raise children’s test scores, which data has shown that doesn’t really affect it (Bhargava et al., 2005). The main issue, though in combating this parasitic disease, though is the fact that …show more content…
Religion itself, even plays a role as seen in Inhorn and Brown’s (1990:102) study where it shown that Muslims usually have higher infections due to their wudu or cleansing bath they do before prayer, which makes combating the disease much more difficult as they cannot cure the individual and provide them with single filters as they must also filter the very water they use for prayer which is more often than not outside their home . There have been attempts to combat using filters and chemicals within the water which have shown signs of working, but it requires water supplies to be modernized which cost a lot of money which many of the communities cannot pay and those who get them from aid organizations are few and …show more content…
One theory behind this is that parasite evolved alongside us and as humanity progressed and began to settle in location the parasite began to adapt to us as we become a more vulnerable being that it could infect whose behavior was almost perfect for it as we stayed near locations where its life cycle could continue and back then we had little defense, it against us once we were infected we stayed infected, even in modern some location still remain like this due to the lack of medical care (Perry, 2014). Finally, Sattenspiel (2000:11) has found some evidence which shows the virus evolving in order to use us to its fullest as a shift in snail vectors by the parasite led to an “unexpected shift from the intestines to the urinary form of the disease” which caused its eggs to be expelled by urine once the time came, this shift was possibly caused in order to increase its spread as humans urine is already in liquid form allowing the virus to quickly enter a water source unlike solid feces