Professor Alan Fenwick, who founded the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI), treated our Sixth Form students to a retrospective of a career spanning five decades, which took him from a Chemistry degree to spearheading the campaign to eradicate the terrible disease Schistosomiasis across different parts of the world.
Schistosomiasis is a parasitic disease that leads to chronic ill-health and affects more than 200 million people in developing countries. Approximately 600 million people are at risk of contracting this disease because they live in tropical regions where water supply and sanitation are inadequate or non-existent. It was only 40 years ago that we first had an effective treatment and by 2017 SCI had reached the milestone of having assisted in the delivery of 140 million treatments against schistoisomiasis in Africa and the Middle East.
We are incredibly grateful to Professor Fenwick for his generosity of spirit and for offering our students such invaluable insight.
