IT LOOKS like something out of a Gothic movie: a metre-long monster that emerges slowly through blistered human skin, its victim writhing in agony. No one is spared. It can creep out from between the toes of a child or from the belly of a pregnant woman. In the mid-1980s Dracunculus medinensis, the Guinea worm, as this horror is called, plagued 21 countries in Africa and Asia and afflicted 3.5m people a year. But last year that number was down to just 22, all of them in Chad, Ethiopia, Mali and South Sudan. Dracunculiasis is thus poised to become the second human disease to be eradicated, after smallpox.
This blessed state of affairs is thanks to a tenacious 30-year campaign led by the Carter Centre, a charity set up by Jimmy Carter, a former American president. Mr Carter picked his target well. Most Guinea worms grow in human beings, and their only other host is the domestic dog. Both humans and...Continue reading
Source: Science and technology http://ift.tt/1nN3tTe
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