Guinea Worm

2 comments

Posted by Karina 上官彤 on Dec 20, 2010 in Featured, Health & Medicine, Service Scholars | 2 comments

Guinea Worm

Next semester, I will be interning at the Carter Center, which was founded by the former president Jimmy Carter and works in coordination with my university, Emory. Since 1982, the Carter Center has worked in 70 different countries to resolve conflict; advance democracy, human rights, and economic opportunity; prevent diseases; improve mental health care; and teach farmers to improve their crop production.

Perhaps the most success initiative of the Carter Center has been its efforts to eradicate the Guinea worm disease. The  roundworm parasite infects the body after an individual drinks water that has been contaminated with Guinea worm larvae. After a year, the worm becomes an adult that can grow up to 3 feet long (1 meter). It emerges from the body through skin blisters that are so painful that they can destroy the  ability to walk. The disease is passed on to others when patients immerse in sources of drinking water to relieve themselves from the burning sensation. The water stimulates the adult female worm to release hundreds of thousands of larvae through the skin blister into the water. Water fleas (copepods) then eat the larvae, and drinking unfiltered water perpetuates the rate of infection.

The disease has existed for thousands of years and there is no cure. The only way to rid the body of the worm is to slowly pull the worm out of the skin blister for weeks. Since 1986, the Carter Center has worked with the Centers for Disease Control, World Health Organization, and UNICEF to reduce the incidence of Guinea worm disease by 99%. In 1986, there were 3.5 million cases of the disease in 20 countries across Africa and Asia. In 2009, there were 3,190 cases primarily in Ghana and Sudan. Through educating the people, supplying water filters, applying chemical treatment to water, and providing water from underground wells, the Carter Center has been able to nearly eradicate this disease. If successful, the Guinea worm disease would be the second disease after smallpox to ever be eradicated. It would be the first parasitic disease to be eradicated, as well as the first disease to be eradicated without vaccination or even medical treatment. The value of education to use filters to prevent the spread of larvae has been especially critical to eradication efforts. Pipe filters are individual filtration devices that are worn around the work and work like a straw to allow people to filter their drinking water while they are away from home. These pipe filters are especially useful for those who have displaced by war such as in Sudan and nomadic people.

Within the next year or so, it is expected that this disease will have been eradicated!

For more information:

http://www.cartercenter.org/health/guinea_worm/mini_site/index.htmll

About the author

Karina 上官彤 Karina, Emory University (Team 2 Leader) - I volunteered in orphanages for disabled children in China while in high school. I formed a close friendship with a 5-year-old boy with cerebral palsy in a rural village in Shanxi Province named Tian Li. I still felt helpless after I returned to the United States, so I became the president of a club that funds surgeries for disabled orphans. I was finally able to return to China this past year and twice visited Tian Li and the other orphans with whom I developed close relationships years ago. The ability to have candid dialogue with the orphans and caregivers in Chinese made me feel like I am actually making a difference. There is so much need in the world and we should all do our part to ease the burden of the less fortunate.

2 Responses to “Guinea Worm”

  1. Joy Liu says:
    December 26, 2010 at 5:46 pm

    Will you be working with the Carter Center on Guinea worm or other issues? This is definitely not a high-profile disease. I’m glad that the Carter Center has dedicated itself to taking measures to prevent it. Hopefully it will be eradicated soon!

    reply
    • Karina 上官彤 says:
      January 14, 2011 at 2:07 am

      I’ll be working at the China Program of the Carter Center, so not this one. But I’ll be in contact with those who work here. It’s an encouraging endeavor and is uplifting news!

      reply

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