Guinea worm disease cycle broken

ACCRA, Ghana (AP):

Jimmy Carter watched in horror as the inches- (centimetres-) long worm emerged from the breast of a woman in remote northern Ghana. That was in the 1980s. The former US president dedicated himself to eradicating the sickness and estimated it would take 10 years.

On Thursday, after 23 years of hard work and a major setback, Ghana finally declared victory.

At a celebration in Ghana's northern Tamale city, Vice-President John Mahama announced that the West African nation has completed 14 consecutive months reporting no indigenous cases, indicating that the cycle of Guinea worm disease, or dracunculiasis, has been broken.

Ghana had 180,000 cases in 1989. By 2005, it had only a few hundred. Then, in January 2007, more than 1,000 new cases were reported in northern Ghana, in what Carter called "our worst disappointment" of the international campaign.

Guinea worm eggs lodge in a microscopic water flea, which people swallow with untreated water, usually at sources that they share with animals and where they bathe, wash clothes and collect drinking water. So the disease attacks the poorest of the poor. The eggs live in abdominal tissue where they hatch and mate. A year later, the worm starts emerging, most often through legs and feet and measuring a yard (meter) and more, in a process so painful it can stop people from working for three months.

To relieve the fiery pain, victims put a foot in water, and the worm emerges and breeds. Just one worm can discharge a million eggs. So hundreds of people can use a dam safely and one child can ruin the communal effort.

Guinea worm does not kill and there is no treatment or vaccine. Instead, water filters are distributed, a mild pesticide kills the flea carrier in water holes, and villagers are counseled to drink only safe water and stay out of infected water.