Conference Abstract | Volume 8, Abstract ELIC2025391 (Poster 017) | Published: 11 Aug 2025
Maria Luz Lima Mendonça1,&
1Instituto Nacional de Saúde Pública, Cabo Verde
&Corresponding author: Maria Luz Lima Mendonça, Instituto Nacional de Saúde Pública, Cabo Verde, Email: mariadaluz.lima@insp.gov.cv
Received: 31 May 2025, Accepted: 09 Jul 2025, Published: 11 Aug 2025
Domain: Infectious Disease Epidemiology
Keywords: Index patient, serological survey, urinary schistosomiasis
©Maria Luz Lima Mendonça. Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health (ISSN: 2664-2824). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Cite this article: Maria Luz Lima Mendonça, Urinary schistosomiasis outbreak investigation in Cabo Verde, First description in country, June 2022. Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health. 2025;8(ConfProc5):00161. https://doi.org/10.37432/JIEPH-CONFPRO5-00161
African continent has the high disease burden of schistosomiasis (SCH), 90% of the cases live in the region. Cape Verde is insular country in West Africa, and until then had no reports of schistosomiasis. On May 5, 2022, a patient was reported with presence of Schistosoma haematobium eggs in urinalysis. An investigation was conducted to identify cases, sources and ways to preventing additional cases.
Two descriptive studies. First, using snowball approach, starting with the first case identified. Second, using retrospective review of medical records. Suspected, confirmed, and discarded case definitions for urinary schistosomiasis (SCHu) were adopted. Phone interviews and urine samples were collected from suspected cases. Analysis were made using Excel. An environmental investigation was conducted to identify of host snail for S.haematobium.
In total, 10 contacts of the index patient were identified, 7 were confirmed, totalizing 8(72.7%) confirmed cases. All male with hematuria and living in Cutelo Gomes (rural São Miguel municipality). Median age was 15 years (range: 7-24), with 3(37.5%) hospitalizations, no deaths. In the interviews, 4(50%) had habit of walking barefoot in water and 3(3.5%) swam in water reservoir tanks. Between September 1st, 2021 and May 10th, 2022, approximately 27,500 medical records were evaluated, from which 49 suspected SCHu case were found. 23(47%) interviewed, 19(82.6%) negatives for S.haematubium and 4(17.4%) did not collect urine samples. Mean age 27 years (DP:16), 18(78.3%) female, 3(13%) had the symptoms on the interview, 11(47.8%) walking barefoot in water and 6(26.1%) swam in water tanks. The environmental investigation found 4 snails genus: Gyraulus; Hydrobia; Lymnaea and Melanoides.
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