Public Health and Prevention Strategies

For prevention, cooking water plants before ingestion is the most important measure to take and should be sufficient. People should also avoid peeling raw water plants with their teeth in endemic regions. Educational programs could assist the dissemination of this knowledge in endemic areas.

It should be noted that it is important to prevent transmission among domesticated pigs where they are economically important, as in the VAC system on the Mekong delta in Vietnam. Waste management for humans, dogs, and pigs is effective alongside cooking. Also, try not to use feces as fertilizer.

Water can be chemically treated with unslaked lime or copper sulfate to kill the flukes.

Any sort of manipulation of the snail population is ill advised, however. Although this may be effective in eradication measures, it may disrupt the delicate ecological balance of the agricultural system. It is said that mammalian hosts play a minor role in maintaining F. buski in the environment. The snails are the most important hosts in maintaining the lifecycle, but the advantages of wiping out the snail population must be weighed carefully with the advantages of maintaining the snail population in the ecosystem. There is no vaccine at the moment.

Boiling water plants kills the infective metacercariae living on them.
Image taken from Asheville Civic Center
Fire Code Regulations for Trade Show Exhibitors

HOME