PIH Receives First Gates Foundation Grant at HSPH
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has approved a one-year planning grant to fund a project co-directed by Michael Reich, chair of the Department of Population and International Health (PIH), to combat parasitic worms in African countries. The grant is the first extended to a department at HSPH from the Gates Foundation, which has an asset base of nearly $22 billion.
Reich
directs the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI) with Alan Fenwick
of the Schistosomiasis Vaccine Development Project in Cairo, Egypt. The
initiative hopes to reduce morbidity associated with schistosomiasis through
drug treatment and education by strengthening national control programs
in Africa.
Schistosomiasis worms live inside humans, where female worms lay their eggs. The eggs leave the body via excreta. If they are discharged into fresh water, the eggs hatch and release embryos that enter specific kinds of fresh-water snails, which serve as hosts. The parasites then produce hundreds of larvae that leave the snail and swim, free to penetrate the skin of people in the water. Once in the body, the larvae migrate through the lungs to the liver where they find a mate and then migrate to the blood vessels around the intestines or bladder. There, the females lay eggs for years, which causes significant organ damage and sometimes death in serious cases. Repeated exposure leads to greater damage.
The drug of choice for treatment of schistosomiasis is praziquantel, which is now a low-cost product and can reduce the worm burden by 90 percent, say the researchers. But the drug is not widely available to those who need it most--the 170 million people infected with the disease living in sub-Saharan Africa. In its planning phase, the SCI will approach the Ministries of Health in some of these countries to assess the current control methods and explore participation by governments in possible later interventions.
The grant offers $731,045 to fund SCI's first phase of planning, which will last about a year. The initiative is seeking partners and has started discussions with the World Health Organization about collaboration. The next phase will be one in which full-scale interventions will be reviewed and possibly implemented.
Both Reich and Fenwick have spent years researching schistosomiasis. Says Reich, "In several senses, schistosomiasis is a neglected disease. We are hoping to make it more prominent."
SCI plans to launch a website within a month at www.schisto.org.
For more about the Gates Foundation, visit www.gatesfoundation.org.
