The Center's strategy is to work with ministries of health to stop the spread of Guinea worm disease by providing health education and helping to maintain political will.
The skin lesions often develop secondary bacterial infections, which exacerbate the suffering and prolong the period of disability. Traditional removal of a Guinea worm consists of winding the worm around a piece of gauze or small stick and manually extracting it - a slow, painful process that often takes weeks. There is no known curative medicine or vaccine to prevent Guinea worm disease - the same treatment for emerging worms has been used for thousands of years. In 2022, Guinea worm infections in animals were down 21%: Chad reported infections in 605 animals, Mali reported 41, Cameroon 27, Angola seven, Ethiopia three, and South Sudan one. The Carter Center works to eradicate Guinea worm in five countries affected by the disease: Angola, Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, and South Sudan. Today, thanks to the work of The Carter Center and its partners - including the countries themselves - the incidence of Guinea worm has been reduced by more than 99.99 percent to 13 provisional* cases in 2022. In 1986, the disease afflicted an estimated 3.5 million people a year in 21 countries in Africa and Asia. Guinea worm is a particularly devastating disease that incapacitates people for extended periods of time, making them unable to care for themselves, work, grow food for their families, or attend school. Guinea worm sufferers may try to seek relief from the burning sensation caused by the emerging worm and immerse their limbs in water sources, but this contact with water stimulates the emerging worm to release its larvae into the water and begin the cycle of infection all over again. After about a year of incubation, the female Guinea worm, one meter long, creates an agonizingly painful lesion on the skin and slowly emerges from the body. Inside a human's abdomen, Guinea worm larvae mate and female worms mature and grow. It is contracted when people consume water from stagnant sources contaminated with Guinea worm larvae.
Considered a neglected tropical disease, Guinea worm disease (dracunculiasis) is a parasitic infection caused by the nematode roundworm parasite Dracunculus medinensis.
0 kommentar(er)
