East China's Shanghai Municipality will issue an emergency plan to prevent the outbreak of schistosomiasis, a tropical disease infected by schistosoma, a worm parasitic in the blood of human beings and mammals, said sources with the municipal government on Saturday.

Shanghai will cooperate with south China's Guangdong Province, the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, east China's Zhejiang and Fujian provinces, where the transmission of the epidemic has been cut off, to strengthen the monitoring of the disease, said Yang Xiaodu, vice mayor of Shanghai.

The epidemic, characterized by infection and gradual destruction of the tissues of human kidneys, liver and other organs, had been widespread in China.

As a region where the epidemic had prevailed, Shanghai had witnessed nine of its 10 districts and counties tortured by the disease, said Yang.

Shanghai exterminated the infection of the disease in 1985 and since then it has had no report of cases of acute schistosoma infection and local originated cases for many years. However, danger of the outbreak of the disease exists as oncomelania, the most popular host for the parasite worm, can still be found in Shanghai.

By the end of last year, 19 confirmed cases and many suspected cases of the disease had been found in Shanghai, all exported from other places.

Only 420,000 migrant workers in Shanghai received special blood checks last year, covering 15 percent of all the registered in the public security departments. And, none of the people who have gone to the epidemic-stricken areas has been monitored, said Yang.

(Xinhua News Agency June 19, 2004)