Bangkok Post: The world windows to Thailand

HEALTH

KHON KAEN : A tropical disease researcher at Khon Kaen University has called on health authorities to pay more attention to liver fluke infections as the disease can lead to liver and bile duct cancer.

Banchob Sripa, of the university's tropical disease research laboratory, said each year up to 28,000 Thais die of liver and bile duct cancer after becoming infected with liver flukes.

The situation has not improved for the past 10 years because health authorities have not focused enough on tackling the problem.

Mr Banchob said in order to effectively control this major food-borne parasitic trematode worm, health authorities should revive integrated measures to prevent its spread.Mr Banchob was speaking on Monday to participants at an international conference on liver fluke-induced diseases in Khon Kaen.

The conference was jointly organised by Khon Kaen University's Faculty of Medicine and the Public Health Ministry.

Around 300 international health experts from 14 countries in Asia and Europe along with the United States and Australia participated in the conference.

But Disease Control Department director-general Manit Teeratantikanon said the national policy on controlling liver fluke had been carried out at provincial and community levels and the agency would conduct a survey on a success of this policy by the year 2015.

Mr Banchob said about 6 million Thais are currently infected with liver flukes.

He said bile duct cancer and liver fluke infection were diseases of the poor. They were endemic in the country and have been a burden on Thailand's public health system for decades.

Thailand also has the world's highest rate of bile duct cancer estimated at 71 per 100,000 people, according to Globocan 2008, the World Health Organisation (WHO) project to report on cancer incidence and mortality worldwide in 2008.

The project also stated that the incidence of bile duct cancer was only estimated at 0.5-1 per 100,000 people in developed countries.

Thailand has spent some 2.24 billion baht on treating people suffering from liver and bile duct cancer. But the survival rate was low because medications were ineffective, Mr Banchob said.