Government hopes to eradicate guinea worm in five years

Burkina Faso's health minister has said the government hopes to eradicate guinea worm infections in the next five years, having reduced the number of new cases reported each year to less than 200. "The victory is near, but the last efforts are the most difficult just like the last steps to win a race," Alain Yoda said on Monday at the opening of a three-day guinea worm program review meeting in Ouagadougou. "Within five years time there should be no more cases of guinea worm," he added. The number of new cases of the debilitating infection caused by a water-borne parasite, fell from 11,784 in 1992, when Burkina Faso launched a campaign to control guinea worm, to 174 last year. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), guinea-worm infections in Africa as a whole have fallen by 98.5 percent since it launched a drive to eradicate the problem in 1989. Health experts and WHO officials at the Ouagadougou meeting expressed optimism that the entire continent was on the verge of eradicating guinea worm. "Sincerely we can say that we are about to get rid of the disease thanks to an important level of commitment of partner countries," Mohamed Hassan, the WHO Representative in Burkina Faso told the meeting. "But our fears are that people get complacent when the disease is no longer making headlines," Hassan said. Such laxity could lead to guinea worm infections reappearing in areas where they had been eradicated, he warned. According to WHO, Cameroon, Kenya, Senegal and Chad have all managed to eradicate guinea worm, but the disease remains endemic in 12 countries, most of which are in West Africa. The infection is caused by a parasite called Drancunculus medinensis that grows to its full size inside painful ulcers on the skin, mainly on the feet. There are no drugs to effectively treat the infection which lasts for several months and frequently causes fever, nausea and vomiting. People become infected with guinea worm by drinking water from ponds contaminated by water fleas that contain an immature form of the parasite. The disease is so painful and debilitating that it prevents adults from working or children from studying properly at school. Because sufferers become too ill to till their fields, the disease is known in Mali as Yoro, which means "empty basket" in the Dogon language. Campaigns against guinea worm focus on providing filters for drinking water to vulnerable populations and treating stagnant ponds to kill the parasites that breed there. They have enjoyed a high success rate. In 1989, a total of 883,640 guinea worm cases were recorded in Africa in 25,789 different locations. But last year only 13,150 cases were reported in 5,000 villages. Three-quarters of all new cases registered last year were in Sudan, whose 20-year-old civil war has hampered efforts to eradicate the disease in the south of the country. In West Africa, the worst affected region is northern Ghana. Guinea worm is endemic Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Sudan, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo and Uganda. The main partners involved in the Africa-wide campaign against the infection are; WHO, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Carter Center.