GENEVA — Reuters Published on Tuesday, Mar. 27, 2007 10:37AM EDT Last updated on Tuesday, Mar. 31, 2009 10:24PM EDT
Another 12 countries have been certified free of guinea worm and the world could be free of the parasitic disease within two years, the United Nations health agency said on Tuesday.
While some three million people suffered from the blight in the early 1980s, the World Health Organization said it now affects only about 25,000 people in nine African countries, with most prevalence in Sudan and Ghana.
Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Djibouti, Tanzania, Zambia, Gabon, Swaziland, Mozambique, Cameroon, Algeria and the Central African Republic have stamped out the disease, also known as dracunculiasis, which spreads in contaminated water.
Guinea worm causes large ulcers, normally in the lower leg, that can swell to the size of a tennis ball and burst, releasing a spaghetti-like parasitic worm that can be 0.8 metres long.
Burning pain often prompts victims to jump into nearby water holes, which can be their communities' only source of drinking water. The worm then releases thousands of larvae that are ingested by water fleas that spread the disease further.
"When a person drinks the water, they are in effect drinking the disease," the WHO said in a statement, noting that pain from guinea worm can incapacitate farmers and cause children to miss school for months at a time.
"The disease keeps its victims imprisoned in a cycle of pain and poverty," it said.
Containing infections by having health workers clean ulcers and pull out the worm can help stop the disease from spreading, the WHO said, also citing efforts to protect water supplies, filter drinking water and kill water fleas as effective.
The Commission for the Certification of Dracunculiasis Eradication, a WHO-created body of scientific experts, has declared 180 countries as guinea worm-free since 1995 and aims to wipe out the disease by 2009.
Smallpox is the only disease to have been eliminated worldwide.
The disease remains in Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Sudan and Togo. Sudan has an estimated 20,000 cases and Ghana has about 4,000, the WHO said.
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