News & Publications: Carter Center Guinea Worm Eradication Program

Wrap-Up | Press Releases | Media Coverage | Articles by Experts | Stories from the Field

GUINEA WORM WRAP-UP

The Guinea Worm Wrap-Up is a report from The Carter Center and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and includes the latest case counts. It is provided on a near-monthly basis as data becomes available from the field.

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See all Guinea Worm Wrap-Up issues from 1983 to present, in English and French (PDF).

PRESS RELEASES

Jimmy Carter Announces Guinea Worm Cases Hit Record Low, Setting Stage for Eradication of Second Human Disease in History
Jan. 17, 2013
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced today that the international Guinea worm eradication campaign spearheaded by The Carter Center has reached its final stages with only 542 cases reported worldwide in 2012. These provisional case numbers, identified by ministries of health in the remaining four endemic nations and compiled by The Carter Center, show that cases of the parasitic disease were reduced by nearly half in 2012.

Carter Center Welcomes Gates Foundation, UAE, CIFF Funding to Achieve Guinea Worm Eradication
Jan. 30, 2012
$40 million in donations announced today from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the Children's Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) will enable a Carter Center-led eradication campaign to end Guinea worm disease by 2015. The Center also announced today that provisional results show only 1,060 cases of Guinea worm occurred worldwide in 2011.

Britain to Help Carter Center Secure Funding For Worldwide Eradication of Worm Disease
Oct. 5, 2011
Britain today announced it will provide major support to a new project that will make Guinea worm the second human disease ever to be eradicated in human history. Read the Blog Feature >

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter Congratulates People of Ghana for Halting Guinea Worm Disease Transmission, Urges Remaining Endemic Countries to Wipe Out Ancient Affliction as Soon as Possible
July 28, 2011
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and The Carter Center congratulate Ghana on becoming the world's newest country to stop transmission of Guinea worm, a water-borne parasitic disease poised to be the second human disease in history to be eradicated.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter Announces Three Countries Left in Guinea Worm Eradication Campaign: Nigeria and Niger Honored as Most Recent Nations to Halt Disease Transmission (En français)
Feb. 17, 2011
Former U.S. President and Carter Center Founder Jimmy Carter announced today that only three endemic countries remain in the fight against Guinea worm disease, poised to be only the second disease in history—after smallpox—to be eradicated.

Guinea Worm Eradication and River Blindness Elimination Receive Major Boost with U.S. $1 Million Donation from OPEC Fund: Signing Ceremony Takes Place at The Carter Center
Oct. 10, 2010
Today, during a special ceremony in Atlanta, former U.S. President and Carter Center Founder Jimmy Carter received on behalf of The Carter Center two new pledges—$500,000 toward the Guinea Worm Eradication Program and $500,000 toward the Onchocerciasis Elimination Program for the Americas (OEPA)—from the OPEC Fund for International Development, represented by His Excellency Director General Suleiman Jasir Al-Herbish.

Carter Center Experts and Partners Chronicle "Nigeria's Triumph" Over Ancient Guinea Worm Disease in American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Article
Aug. 4, 2010
In the August 2010 issue of the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, a new paper co-authored by experts from the Nigeria Ministry of Health, The Carter Center, and the World Health Organization, details Nigeria's historic triumph over many challenges to successfully eliminate the ancient waterborne plague Guinea worm disease (also known as dracunculiasis).

MEDIA COVERAGE

Profiles in Science: Donald R. Hopkins on Guinea Worm Disease
April 22, 2013
Published by The New York Times.
As the world inches closer to the eradication of Guinea worm disease, Dr. Donald R. Hopkins reflects on how the prejudice he experienced growing up in the American south helped him communicate with the rural villages most affected by the parasite. Dr. Hopkins is the vice president for health programs at the Carter Center, the group founded by former President Jimmy Carter to advance human rights and fight disease.

Death of the Guinea Worm Draws Near
April 20, 2013
Published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In 1986, roughly 3.5 million people in 21 countries across Africa and Asia contracted Guinea worm. That was the year The Carter Center launched a global campaign to eradicate the disease, which is spread through contaminated water. Last year, thanks largely to the efforts of the center, the CDC and the World Health Organization, there were 542 reported cases.

President Carter on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Part 1 > | Part 2 >
April 9, 2013
Aired on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
President Carter appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and explained how The Carter Center has nearly eradicated Guinea worm disease. President Carter also discussed latrine building in Ethiopia to prevent trachoma and answered a few questions about the news of the day.

Guinea Worm Disease on the Way Out
April 3, 2013
Published by the Australian Broadcasting Company.
The human race has only ever wiped out one single infectious disease — and that was smallpox. We could wipe out smallpox because it had just one single reservoir — people like you and me. Well, for the same reason, we might be able to eradicate another very nasty infectious disease — Guinea worm disease.

Former President Carter Says His Organization is on Verge of Eradicating Guinea Worm Disease
March 25, 2013
Published by Current TV/The Young Turks with Cenk Uygur.
Cenk Uygur sits down with former President Jimmy Carter to talk about the Carter Center and its work to wipe out the Guinea worm, a water parasite that affects many impoverished countries. "The Carter Center really fills vacuums in the world," Carter says. "[Guinea worm] was a disease that not many public officials knew about — it was in the most remote villages in the world. And it was a very difficult disease to know how to correct. We figured all of those answers out … and we are right on the verge of eradicating this disease."

Interview: President Jimmy Carter
March 1, 2013
Published by Vision Magazine.
Since its foundation in 1982, the Carter Center has touched the lives of millions around the world. In this exclusive interview, President Jimmy Carter talks to Vision about the Center's work eradicating diseases and his unwavering mission to improve the lives of the world's poorest people.

Disease Eradication
Jan. 3, 2013
New England Journal of Medicine, Vol 368 No. 1.pp. 53-64. Doi:10.1056/NEJMra1200391
Author: Donald R. Hopkins. Since the last case of naturally-occurring smallpox in 1977, there have been three major international conferences devoted to the concept of disease eradication. Several other diseases have been considered as potential candidates for eradication, but the World Health Organization (WHO) has targeted only two other diseases for global eradication after smallpox. In 1986, WHO's policy-making body, the World Health Assembly, adopted the elimination of dracunculiasis (Guinea worm disease) as a global goal, and it declared eradication of poliomyelitis a global goal in 1988. Although both diseases now appear to be close to eradication, the fact that neither goal has been achieved after more than two decades, and several years beyond the initial target dates for their eradication, underscores the daunting challenge of such efforts, as does the failure of previous attempts to eradicate malaria, hookworm, yaws and other diseases. "Disease Eradication" was published as part one of "A Global View of Health – An Unfolding Series." Read the overview of the series >

Progress Toward Global Eradication of Dracunculiasis — January 2011–June 2012
Oct. 26, 2012
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Vol.61 No. 42
Dracunculiasis (Guinea worm disease) is caused by Dracunculus medinensis, a parasitic worm. Approximately 1 year after initial infection from contaminated drinking water, the worm emerges through the skin of the infected person, usually on the lower limb. Pain and secondary bacterial wound infection can cause temporary or permanent disability that disrupts work and schooling for the entire family.

Dracunculiasis Eradication and the Legacy of the Smallpox Campaign: What's New and Innovative? What's Old and Principled? [Presented at the Symposium on Smallpox Eradication: Lessons, Legacies & Innovations]
Dec. 18, 2011
This article was online on Dec. 18, 2011 in Vaccine. Online signup is required to read the full article.
Coming on the heels the declaration of smallpox eradication in 1980 was the launch of the dracunculiasis (Guinea worm) eradication program, as a key outcome indicator of the success of the United Nations 1981-1990 International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (IDWSSD). The dracunculiasis eradication campaign has carried on well beyond the close of the IDWSSD largely due to the efforts of President Jimmy Carter and The Carter Center, to assist the national Guinea Worm Eradication Programs in collaboration with partner organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), UNICEF, and the World Health Organization. Dracunculiasis eradication efforts have as primary tools health education, filter distribution for drinking water filtration, and case containment, all guided by rigorous village based surveillance.

Progress Toward Global Eradication of Dracunculiasis, January 2010 - June 2011
Oct. 28, 2011
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Vol. 60 / No. 42.
In 1986, the World Health Assembly (WHA) called for the elimination of dracunculiasis (Guinea worm disease), a parasitic infection in humans caused by Dracunculus medinensis (1). At the time, an estimated 3.5 million cases were occurring annually in 20 countries in Africa and Asia, and 120 million persons were at risk for the disease (1,2).

Read more Articles by Carter Center Experts >>

STORIES FROM THE FIELD: REAL LIVES REAL CHANGE

Meet Dr. Nabil Aziz Mikhail: Tireless Warrior Against Guinea Worm Disease, River Blindness in Sudan
May 7, 2012
Ask about the time he nearly died from cerebral malaria during a Guinea worm surveillance trip, or his supervisory visit to a town under siege, or the nights he spent stuck in a car with no food, little water, and once with three flat tires, and Dr. Nabil Aziz Mikhail will tell you he doesn't like to sit in his office.

The Carter Center at 30: Leader in Disease Eradication and Elimination
April 9, 2012
The Carter Center has become a global leader in the eradication and elimination of diseases, focusing efforts to build health and hope in some of the poorest and most isolated places on earth.

Meet Dr. Zerihun Tadesse Gebrelassie
March 26, 2012
Zerihun Tadesse Gebrelassie barely remembers his mother rushing his baby brother to a hospital in Ethiopia. Many patients, long lines, and few health workers made her wish she had a relative — maybe one who was a nurse — who could help her son. His little brother survived, but Dr. Zerihun says his mother never forgot that scene.

Salissou Kane: Niger's Trachoma Control Campaign Employs Lessons Learned in Guinea Worm Fight
Jan. 23, 2012
Completely eliminating a disease from a country twice the size of Texas is no easy task. Salissou Kane, the Carter Center's country representative for Niger learned this time and again during more than two decades fighting Guinea worm in his homeland. Now that the disease has been wiped out nationwide, Kane is using his hard-won knowledge of Niger's complex multicultural communities to tackle to the bacterial eye disease trachoma.

Building Better Lives, Brick by Brick
Jan. 3, 2012
The Carter Center works in some of the world's most remote and impoverished communities. These are areas beyond where the road ends, with no power grid, and limited access to outside markets. For health workers striving to eliminate Guinea worm disease in South Sudan, this means many essential items, like building supplies for a new case containment center, are virtually non-existent. However, with a little ingenuity, the staff members of the South Sudan Guinea Worm Eradication Program are blazing their own path, and building the bricks needed for success.

Sadi Moussa: Public Health Worker Begins Third Decade of Improving Lives, Battling Guinea Worm and Trachoma in Mali
Aug. 5, 2011
"I think I have something to share with another country" says Sadi Moussa, explaining why he recently relocated to Mali to help tackle public health problems after almost two decades doing similar work in his home country of Niger.