March 30, 2007
 
MANOBI EXTENDS ITS SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AIMS TO HEALTH SECTOR
Fight against bilharzias: Electronic Monitoring & Evaluation tools span six disciplines
 
Long interested in branching out into the health sector, Manobi, the international award-winning African ICT social enterprise, debuts its philanthropic arm, Manobi Development Foundation, by embarking on an expansion of its M&E toolkit into the health sector. By merging the cellphone, PDA and internet as convergent data platforms, Manobi can optimize health interventions, from prevention to case detection and treatment, by providing a revolutionary improvement in the speed, accuracy, sourcing and analysis of public health data gathered at the village level.
 
Via its new philanthropic arm, Manobi Development Foundation, a California 501c3 corporation, Manobi recently completed a field assessment along the River Senegal and conference in Dakar on the feasibility of an environmentally beneficial biological intervention to control the snail intermediate host of human Schistosomiasis. This waterborne parasitic disease, locally known as Bilharzia, follows Malaria as the second leading cause of death in Senegal.
 
“By far, the main cause of mortality in the Richard Toll area is human schistosomiasis,” says Dr Gassama, Chief Medical Officer of the Senegalese Sugarcane Company (CSS) clinic and hospital, social welfare arm of the sugar cane plantation that is the largest local employer in Richard Toll. “Three out of five of our deaths are caused by complications of Schistosomiasis, and the remaining two, by liver cancer, which is also a consequence of chronic Schistosomiasis.”
 
Although Schistosomiasis is not supported by the UN Global Fund, it infects 200 million people per year and is the fourth leading cause of global morbidity and mortality. 600 million people are at risk of infection.
 
A debilitating disease that leads to malnutrition, poor learning, chronic anaemia, and low productivity, it currently affects more than 25% of school children in Senegal. But since Schistosomiasis is a vectorborne infectious disease, averages are not meaningful diagnostic tools because prevalence varies widely from place to place, some localities exceeding 60%. This makes electronic GPS surveillance an interesting asset for successful surveillance and disease control.
 
Tragically, this disease put Northern Senegal on the radar of global health and environmental disaster monitors when in the early 1990’s, the completion of two dams on the Senegal River caused salinity changes that made several special extinct and disrupted the natural food chain. As a result, the population of certain snails and other molluscs, and some flora exploded exponentially, leading to an intense and dynamic outbreak of both Schistosomiasis haematobium, previously rare, and an even greater outbreak of Schistosomiasis mansoni, which had not previously existed. Several populations experienced a prevalence increase from 0% to ~100% in the space of four years. Cattle, goats, and other domesticated animals experienced a similar surge in the veterinary form of this disease. Neighbouring countries sharing the same banks, Mauritania, Mali, and Guinea, were also affected though poor record keeping prevents a reliable assessment.
 
The field assessment of March 13-26, 2007, coordinated by Manobi, brought together leading researchers in medicine, ecology, parasitology and malacology from the University of California at Santa Barbara (California); ISRA, the Institute for Agricultural Research in Senegal, supported in part by the EU; and the School of Medicine and Pharmacology at the University of Dakar (Senegal). The 14-day mission to the regions of Richard Toll, Dagama and Podor, brought to light a promising new form of biological management using African freshwater prawns native to the Senegal River, the natural predators of the snail intermediate hosts of infection. The West African freshwater prawn to be tested also has a significant nutritional and culinary (economic) potential.
 
The structure Manobi envisages provides sustainability of biological disease control through income-generating activities for village women. The development of micro-enterprises in aquaculture at the smallest local level will disperse production and thus contribute not only to public and veterinary health, but also to poverty remediation, the protection of threatened species now near extinction, as well as gender issues. This idea has received strong support from both local stakeholders and public health officials. It will be structured for real-time, multiple user interface between health, environment and local women’s associations engaged in controlling the spread of infection.
 
To structure a dynamic, multi-partner, multi-channel and multi-media workspace, Manobi is in process of creating a convergent mobile 2 Internet platform for researchers engaged in the biological control of snails; for doctors responsible for case detection and treatment, for village chief responsible for public communications, and for women’s associations who will raise and harvest the freshwater prawns for local and international markets.
 
The platform is being developed as part of a pilot project that will conduct environmental impact assessments, define and optimize a cultivation scheme for the freshwater prawn, and establish an appropriate micro business model for aquaculture. Manobi’s goal is to develop a freshwater prawn micro-enterprise kit that water management and dam building agencies can use to protect the environment from imbalances in flora and fauna that have historically led to rapid, intense, and widespread outbreaks of human Schistosomiasis, the fourth leading cause of global morbidity, a disease disproportionately affecting women and children.
 
Contacts:
 
Senegal : Daniel Annerose (daniel.annerose@manobi.sn) – tel : +221 869 20 50, Dakar
 
USA : Elizabeth Huttinger (elizabeth.huttinger@manobi.sn) tel : +1 626 675 7773, Pasadena