China to survey Tibet for fighting deadly parasite

Chinese medical workers will survey Tibet to prepare a treatment plan for controlling echinococcosis, a fatal parasitic tapeworm disease affecting herding communities.
A total of 920 doctors and medical workers, including 624 from Tibet and 296 from the rest of the country, will be sent to 364 villages in 70 counties and districts of Tibet by the end of this month, Li Bin, deputy director of the regional disease control and prevention centre, said.
Some 72,800 people will be covered under the scheme.
The field investigation will be finished within a month, and the investigators will create an investigation report and treatment plan.

"Hopefully the treatment can begin by the end of this year," Li said.
Echinococcosis also known as Hydatid disease is a potentially lethal zoonotic disease caused by tapeworms. It mainly affects herding areas in China's Gansu, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Qinghai, Sichuan, Tibet and Xinjiang.
As of 2012, about 50 million people lived in areas where the disease is prevalent.
The government aims to control the disease by 2020. Tibet started fighting the disease in 2007. From 2011 to 2015, more than 700 people in the region received surgery, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.