Guinea worm disease persists in Ghana

SAVELUGU, Ghana – The little girl screams in pain and reaches for the hand slowly drawing a thin, white worm from her blistered foot.

 "Stop it! Do stop it!" she begs.

Finally, the worm is out, and the veranda full of other infected children explodes in claps and shouts of congratulation.

It took six weeks to draw the worm out, and another is about to emerge from her other foot.

A 20-year fight to eradicate guinea worm disease, or dracunculiasis, is in the last and most difficult stages. It could be the first parasitic disease wiped out worldwide – and only the second disease ever to be eliminated; the first was smallpox in 1979.

Ghana provides a glimpse of the obstacles that stand in the way of guinea worm being vanquished.

Enormous strides have been made since former President Jimmy Carter dedicated himself to the cause after seeing a worm emerging from a woman's breast in Ghana's remote north in 1988.

Mr. Carter, who rallied the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICEF, the U.N. World Health Organization and the Japanese government to the effort, estimated it would be eradicated in 10 years. Now, at age 82, he hopes it will happen in his lifetime.

In 1989, the disease afflicted a reported 3.5 million people in 23 countries in Africa and Asia. In 2005, only 10,674 cases were reported in nine countries – all in Africa.

The last cases always are the most difficult phase of eradication. That is in part because, at a point when so much effort and money already has been extended, monitoring has to be stepped up to ensure no cases have been missed.

In Ghana, reported guinea worm cases dropped from 180,000 in 1989 to about 4,000 in 1994. But in January, there were 1,001 new cases, almost double the number a year ago.

"Ghana has been our worst disappointment," Mr. Carter said in a visit to the country last month.

Ninety percent of Ghana's remaining cases are within 100 miles of Savelugu, a semiarid Sahelian stretch of dusty farm plots and scrubland prone to drought, where guinea worms breed in manmade dams. About 25,000 people live in the area.

Aid workers built the dams in low-lying flat areas to catch rainwater because wells were so difficult to drill through the region's rock bed. But in the dry season, the dams become breeding reservoirs for guinea worm.

Guinea worm eggs lodge in a microscopic water flea, which people swallow with untreated water. The eggs lodge 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 or more. It is a painful process that can stop people from working for three months.

To relieve the fiery pain, a victim puts the foot in water, and the worm emerges and breeds. Just one worm can discharge a million eggs. So hundreds of people using a dam can practice safe water use and one 3-year-old child can ruin the communal effort.

Guinea worm does not kill its victims but debilitates them, at huge cost to communities already among the world's poorest.

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