Currently, all national GWEPs remain fully operational, with precautions taken to ensure safety of program staff and community members in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Animal infections have now overtaken human cases, with 1,601 reported animal infections in 2020 and 443 during January–June 2021. Guinea worm infections in dogs were first reported in Chad in 2012. However, dracunculiasis eradication is challenged by civil unrest, insecurity, and epidemiologic and zoologic concerns. With 27 cases in humans reported in 2020, five during January–June 2021, and only six countries currently affected by dracunculiasis (Angola, Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, South Sudan, and importations into Cameroon), achievement of eradication appears to be close. The Guinea Worm Eradication Program (GWEP), led by The Carter Center and supported by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, CDC, and other partners, began assisting ministries of health in countries with endemic disease. In 1986, with an estimated 3.5 million cases † occurring annually in 20 African and Asian countries § ( 3), the World Health Assembly called for dracunculiasis elimination ( 4). The eradication campaign began in 1980 at CDC ( 1). There is no vaccine or medicine to prevent or medicine to treat dracunculiasis eradication relies on case containment* to prevent water contamination and other interventions to prevent infection: health education, water filtration, treatment of unsafe water with temephos (an organophosphate larvicide), and provision of safe drinking water ( 1, 2). The worm typically emerges through the skin on a lower limb of the host 1 year after infection, causing pain and disability ( 1). medinensis larvae, but in recent years also appears increasingly to be transmitted by eating fish or other aquatic animals. Dracunculiasis (Guinea worm disease), caused by the parasite Dracunculus medinensis, is traditionally acquired by drinking water containing copepods (water fleas) infected with D.

Download horsehair worm location