How effective is the fight against bilharziasis?

Sir: There is a need for government to proactively rise up to the occasion to stamp out this blight called bilharziasis in Nigeria.I read a submission in a different place, which submitted that Schistosomiasis today is next to Malaria as the most devastating parasitic disease in tropical countries. This discovery once more was petrifying to me and I hope governments can do something fast to reduce the scourge on poor people.

Praziquantel I read in that report is the drug that can facilitate the treatment of the ailment. So many people may not have heard of Bilharziasis and its debilitating effect on health. I muse on the numbers of children who may have this bad health without their knowledge.

Particularly children who bath in dirty motionless ponds and streams from all corners of the rural villages in Nigeria. Most rural children love outings specifically in the adolescent years, for example, youths in the northern part of the country love to visit the Fadama, (a place where crops are grown all year without fail, around water bodies due to the frequent drought experienced in the north), to swim in these dirty waters, most times, unintentionally gulping it giving rise to schistosomiasis or bilharziasis a riverine infection that damages internal organs resulting in the passage of blood in urine and/or faeces and an enlarged liver.

Life has always been grim for the rural dwellers. Today it is even worse for the city dwellers with no supply of clean drinking water by government, who knows the number of children plagued with stunted growth and premature death caused by bilharziasis?Jimmy Carter Foundation is credited with helping to fight this scourge in Nigeria. Which agency of state is helping to do so as well?
Simon Abah