Study Areas
Schistosomiasis transmission in Sichuan is confined primarily to the
hilly agricultural regions of the province. The snail
interemediate host,
Oncomelania hupensis robertsoni inhabits a range of irrigation
ditches that run alongside agricultural fields in terraced hillsides and
mountain valleys of these regions. Both the agricultural ecology and
snail subspecies that characterize transmission in Sichuan Province
differ from those of the lakes/plains and large
canal endemic environments along the lower Yangtze in China. While much
of our early work has focused on endemic transmission areas in the Anning River Valley,
an area near Xichang, and the Changqiu Mountains, our current studies
are largely focused in the Chuanbei area north of Chengdu.