In most affected communities, the condition is often accepted as normal since to them, all growing children pass blood in their urine and “grow out of it”. Mass treatment of school children has been a regular exercise often undertaken by stake holders to decrease the disease burden and reduce transmission in selected communities. Urinary schistosomiasis can have devastating impact on the urinary tract which is often unacknowledged and unevaluated. Such omission

www.selleckchem.com/products/Gefitinib.html could have implication for progressive renal damage which, if not detected and treated, could lead to end stage renal failure and death. We present five (5) cases of urinary schistosomiasis with severe obstructive uropathy seen at the paediatric nephrology/urology units of Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Ghana. All five cases had some degree

of anaemia and hypertension. Two of the five cases presented with end stage renal failure and died subsequently whilst two underwent successful surgery. One made a spontaneous recovery from the urinary obstruction though still has significant renal impairment. This potential devastating effect of urinary schistosomiasis on the kidneys calls for thorough evaluation and assessment of each confirmed case to include blood pressure measurement, full blood count, and ultrasonography of the urinary system. Mass screening programmes should be combined with portable ultrasonography of the kidneys, ureters and bladder. Keywords: Urinary schistosomiasis, Obstructive uropathy, End Stage Renal-Failure, Hydroureteronephrosis,

Nephrostomy Introduction Urinary schistosomiasis is a common parasitic disease Perifosine order affecting hundreds of millions of people in tuclazepam many countries in the tropics.1–3 It is caused by the blood fluke Schistosoma haematobium. The disease is prevalent in areas where there are large water bodies for irrigation and particularly where dams have been constructed.1,4 In Ghana, the disease is endemic and widely distributed in many areas around the major rivers.5,6 Prevalence rate of 12.4% has been reported in some endemic regions in Ghana.6 Because of the lifestyle and behaviour of children in swimming in large water bodies, they are the most at risk of the disease.2,7 The disease manifests principally as passage of haematuria, overt (terminal or total) or covert. In endemic regions, there is a high prevalence of haematuria among school age children to the extent that children who do not pass blood in their urine may be regarded as “abnormal” by their peers.2 The infection is confirmed by the identification of the ova (with a lateral spine) on urine microscopy. The widespread endemicity of this disease and its familiarity in such regions of the world often tend to downplay the devastating impact that this disease can cause. Quite often, individual clinical cases are only treated with praziquantel (the drug of choice) without recourse to further evaluation and investigations.