ABSTRACT
PIP: Harpur Memorial Hospital in Menouf and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London have shared a development program through the laboratories for eight years to develop laboratory facilities and organize a diploma course in medical laboratory technical training, in Egypt, with the help of an annual visit by a senior laboratory medical scientist from London. The laboratory in Egypt has been upgraded while the Hospital for Tropical Diseases has benefitted by obtaining valuable teaching material for its training programs in the UK and worldwide. Schistosomiasis is a major health problem in Egypt, with both S. haematobium and S. mansoni common in the Menoufaya district of the Nile delta, requiring significant laboratory time for diagnosis. This article describes the diagnostic procedures used in Harpur Memorial Hospital serving an area of acute schistosomiasis infection with consideration of whether diagnostic tests used in Egypt require further development. The laboratory in London sees mainly expatriate patients with a range of schistosomiasis conditions and has a wider range of diagnostic procedures available. In Menouf, stool and urine samples of all outpatients are routinely examined, with rectal biopsies performed on a proportion of patients with good clinical indication of schistosomiasis. Serodiagnosis for Schistosoma is not currently available at the hospital. Rectal biopsy has, however, proved to be a reliable method of diagnosing schistosomiasis in the difficult cases when urine and stool examinations were negative, with the introduction of the formol ether technique for concentration of faeces having greatly improved the initial detection of ova.^ieng
