We are celebrating the end of Guinea worm disease in Ghana in West Africa.
We do this work for the kids who will grow up not knowing Guinea worm disease.
An amazing team of people came together in Ghana to eradicate Guinea worm disease.
Prevention strategies include filtering drinking water and discouraging people with Guinea worm from wading in water.
Guinea worm is a non-fatal disease transmitted by water fleas living in stagnant water.
Carter recalled Thursday that he first saw people living with Guinea worm in Ghana.
In comparison, Guinea worm disease is an obscure condition and has no vaccine.
In comparison, Caplan said, stopping Guinea worm is effective relative to the expenditure.
"I am persuaded that the Guinea worm effort is entirely possible, " Henderson said.
These are the only four countries that still have transmission of Guinea worm.
The unrest there has made efforts to stop Guinea worm more difficult.
In October 2012, I traveled to South Sudan to build and encourage the team needed to finish Guinea worm eradication.
The goal is to eliminate the following diseases by 2020: Guinea worm, leprosy, lymphatic filariasis, blinding trachoma and sleeping sickness.
While Guinea worm disease does not usually result in death, it is associated with incapacitating pain and secondary bacterial infections.
"We need to find anyone who has Guinea worm" and "prevent them from going back to the water source, " he said.
The disease gets into the body when people drink contaminated water, which contains water fleas that have ingested Guinea worm larvae.
Every year, health officials from both sides convened to discuss Guinea worm.
Guinea worm disease is usually non-fatal, but causes crippling pain and can immobilize its victims from being able to work, farm and function.
The next goal with Guinea worm is to stop transmission of the parasitic disease in southern Sudan, which reported 2, 690 cases in 2009.
Despite the rift between its mostly Arabic northern region and African south, Guinea worm has been an issue that brought the sides together.
No vaccines or treatments are available for Guinea worm, but the international effort has made significant strides with health education and encouraging behavior changes.
It is led by the South Sudan Guinea Worm Eradication Program.
Former President Jimmy Carter negotiated a cease-fire in 1995 to allow health workers to conduct national Guinea worm disease surveillance, treating patients and tracking cases.
In a household where a parent has had Guinea worm, toddlers will be less well nourished because the infected parent will have difficulty farming, Hopkins said.
We will be able to tell our families that we were involved with Rotary when we celebrated the end of polio and Guinea worm disease from the world.
Educating people about Guinea worm has other benefits besides preventing this specific disease, Hopkins said, such as helping people to think more carefully about the water they drink.
Cases of Guinea worm, a parasite that slowly burns through the skin, are down from 3.5 million in 1986 to 25, 000 last year, thanks to efforts of the Carter Center and others.
"The cease-fire enabled us to conduct disease surveillance with the freedom of movement, not fearing land mines and getting shot, " said Dr. Nabil Azziz, who coordinated Sudan's national Guinea worm eradication program until 2007.
The program in Mali, however, has not been able to operate fully, or at all, in areas occupied by rebel groups, said Ernesto Ruiz-Tiben, director of the Guinea Worm Eradication Program at the Carter Center.
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