The national campaign for ridding Bilharzias will be launched on March 24, and aims to rid locals from Bilharzias that afflicts over 3 million people each year. This campaign comes a few days after a campaign that targeted several provinces and districts where the disease is widespread.

Recently, the Ministry of Health in collaboration with the World Health Organization established a new administration for fighting forgotten diseases including bilharzias. Over $600 million has been allocated for fighting bilharzias.

The reports indicated that about 80 percent of the total cases of bilharzias ranges in locals between 6 to 18 years of age, which is the faction being targeted by the campaign. The disease settles in 107 districts out of 107 districts surveyed by the programs.

Further, age group 6-18, as well as farmers are the most vulnerable to the disease because they are in constant contact with stagnant waters, mainly because they do not use the safe methods of irrigation or boots that safeguard them.

About 69 percent of the bilharzias-afflicted children are of school students while the remaining percent is of those who do not join schools.

Meanwhile, several experts waged a severe attack on Health Ministry, as its campaign was late and further comes right before rain seasons, where more stagnant pond water exist. They also pinpointed the nonexistence of safe and clean drinking water, and this leads 80 percent of rural areas residents to drink from unclean pond water, especially when this water accommodates bilharzias maggots.

Similarly, local council members, associations and civil society organizations criticized health and information ministry for not conducting any awareness campaign prior to the launch of the campaign, hinting the disease has resulted in killing thousands of youth and children. Thousands of other children suffer of the disease developments including weak memory, kidney failures, cancer, etc.

They also called on Health Ministry and WHO to supply the required medicine for treating bilharzias as well as educating them on how to use them, particularly when summer season is at the door steps.

Doctors see the medicament period is not long and it can last for six months at most, and this requires the campaign to be renewed from time to time, stressing that medicine should be continued because it is not a vaccine.

Meanwhile, doctors hint that medicines could have bad effects on those having bilharzias especially when administered at schools with students who could not have been taken their food or those who lack in healthy food because of poverty.

Bilharzias is known in Yemen as the silent disease as its symptoms need a long time to be cleared among its victims. Yemen and Sudan are the only Middle Eastern countries that suffer from the disease.

Additionally, bilharzias parasites live in stagnant water ponds, streams and swamps and the disease is of a real challenge especially in mountainous and remote areas where health services are non-existent.

Still, people see that the sum allocated for fighting bilharzias is a big one and it could have been utilized in providing healthy and safe water to rural areas residents as well as boosting awareness campaigns and supplying medicine to destitute and poor people.