Burkina Faso

Current status: Transmission stopped, November 2006
Certification of Dracunculiasis Eradication: 2011

Guinea worm disease, or dracunculiasis, is a parasitic infection that results from drinking water contaminated with Guinea worm larvae, found inside copepods, a type of small crustacean. It eventually causes painful blisters from which the worms emerge. 

How it Started 

In 1992, the Carter Center’s Guinea Worm Eradication Program began working with the Burkina Faso government and other international organizations to eliminate Guinea worm disease from the more than 600 endemic communities in the country.

The major challenges included:

• The poor road conditions during rainy season, also peak transmission season, making certain villages inaccessible
• The need to provide safe water to certain populations
• The mobilization of communities to contain and report cases of the disease
• Imported cases from other countries, including Mali, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire

Our Work and Methods

To prevent and eradicate Guinea worm disease in Burkinabe communities, our program:

• Promoted health education
• Distributed nylon filters to strain out copepods hosting the larvae
• Completed monthly ABATE® larvicide (donated by BASF Corp.) treatments of stagnant ponds
• Advocated with water organizations
• Increased efforts to build safer hand-dug wells
• Trained, supplied, and supervised village volunteers, empowering them to carry out monthly surveillance and interventions

Impacts

Despite the obstacles, we helped eradicate Guinea worm disease in Burkina Faso. The last case was reported in November 2006, and the World Health Organization certified the country free of the disease in 2011. 

The program was part of a larger initiative, led by the late Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug, that helped over 8 million small-scale sub-Saharan African farmers in countries where malnutrition is a constant threat.

How it Started

Working with the Burkina Faso Ministry of Agriculture, the Center began helping Burkinabe farmers improve agricultural development in 1997. 

Good harvests were especially  difficult in the dry climate because of:

• Erratic rainfall
• Soil degradation
• Population pressures

Our Work and Methods

We helped the Ministry of Agriculture institute a program to:

• Allow farmers to experiment with new crops, fertilizers, and planting methods 
• Encourage farmers to teach neighbors about new technologies and their successes
• Identify less costly, more efficient local markets for farmers to sell surplus crops
• Develop projects focused on post-harvest technologies, such as processing and storing methods
• Encourage neighboring countries in the program to foster cooperative efforts

Though we ended our agricultural activities in Burkina Faso in 2005, the program we helped establish created a ripple effect to stimulate food self-sufficiency.