Carter Centre on elimination of guinea worm

Accra, Jan. 29, GNA - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalyn, will begin a five-day; three-nation, West African tour from Monday February 2, to call international attention to the need to eliminate the last one per cent of guinea worm disease in the world.

The travel on behalf of The Carter Center would take the former US President and his wife to Togo, Mali and Ghana. The World Health Organization Director-General Dr Lee Jong-wook and UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Kul Gautam would join President Carter in Ghana. The Center, UNICEF, and WHO are lead partners in a worldwide coalition that has helped countries reduce incidences of the disease by 99 percent, from 3.5 million in 1986 to approximately 35,000 today, a release from the Center said.

Ghana's Minister of Health Dr Kweku Afriyie would host and guide the visiting delegations to tour villages that have people suffering from the guinea worm disease.

Guinea worm disease is expected to be the first parasitic disease to be eradicated without vaccine or medication.

It is contracted when people consume stagnant water, contaminated with microscopic water fleas carrying infective larvae. Inside a human's abdomen, the larvae mature and grow, some as long as three feet. After a year, the worm slowly emerges through a painful blister in the skin, usually on the lower limbs.

"Guinea worm disease is unfamiliar, even unimaginable to most people in the developed world. The pain and suffering it causes its victims are tragic, yet they are preventable," the Center said

President Carter, Chairman of The Carter Center and 2002 Nobel Laureate, said: "Relieving the suffering caused by guinea worm is as easy as educating people about the disease and providing them with simple solutions to make their drinking water safe.

"Health is a human right and can be a foundation for peace. The end is in sight. Working together, we can stop guinea worm now."

The delegation would visit Tamale in Ghana's Northern Region to talk with villagers and community leaders on combating the disease in the most highly endemic area remaining in West Africa.

With 13 of the original 20 endemic countries free or nearly free of guinea worm, the disease remains only in West Africa and Sudan. Ghana is the most endemic guinea worm country in West Africa, second in the world only to Sudan, which has nearly 70 per cent of the remaining cases. Ghana accounts for about 25 per cent of the approximately 35,000 reported cases in 2003.