A D. medinensis worm emerges from a wound on a person's foot
Specialty
Infectious disease
Symptoms
Painful blister that a long white worm crawls out of
Usual onset
One year after exposure
Causes
Ingesting Guinea worm-infected copepods, drinking contaminated water
Prevention
Preventing those infected from putting the wound in drinking water, treating contaminated water
Treatment
Slowly extracting worm, supportive care
Frequency
14 cases worldwide (2023)[1]
Deaths
~1% of cases
Dracunculiasis, also called Guinea-worm disease, is a parasitic infection by the Guinea worm, Dracunculus medinensis. A person becomes infected by drinking water contaminated with Guinea-worm larvae that reside inside copepods (a type of small crustacean). Stomach acid digests the copepod and releases the Guinea worm, which penetrates the digestive tract and escapes into the body. Around a year later, the adult female migrates to an exit site – usually the lower leg – and induces an intensely painful blister on the skin. Eventually, the blister bursts, creating a painful wound from which the worm gradually emerges over several weeks. The wound remains painful throughout the worm's emergence, disabling the affected person for the three to ten weeks it takes the worm to emerge.
There is no medication to treat or prevent dracunculiasis. Instead, the mainstay of treatment is the careful wrapping of the emerging worm around a small stick or gauze to encourage and speed up its exit. Each day, a few more centimeters of the worm emerge, and the stick is turned to maintain gentle tension. Too much tension can break and kill the worm in the wound, causing severe pain and swelling. Dracunculiasis is a disease of extreme poverty, occurring in places with poor access to clean drinking water. Prevention efforts center on filtering drinking water to remove copepods, as well as public education campaigns to discourage people from soaking affected limbs in sources of drinking water, as this allows the worms to spread their larvae.
Accounts consistent with dracunculiasis appear in surviving documents from physicians of Greco-Roman antiquity. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, dracunculiasis was widespread across much of Africa and South Asia, affecting as many as 48 million people per year. The effort to eradicate dracunculiasis began in the 1980s following the successful eradication of smallpox. By 1995, every country with endemic dracunculiasis had established a national eradication program. In the ensuing years, dracunculiasis cases have dropped precipitously, with 14 cases reported worldwide in 2023.[1] 15 previously endemic countries have eradicated dracunculiasis, leaving the disease endemic in four countries: Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, and South Sudan. If the eradication program succeeds, dracunculiasis will become the second human disease eradicated, after smallpox. D. medinensis can also infect dogs, cats, and baboons, though animal cases are also falling due to eradication efforts. Other Dracunculus species cause dracunculiasis in reptiles worldwide and in mammals in the Americas.
^ ab"Update: 14 human cases of Guinea worm reported in 2023". The Carter Center. 6 March 2024. Archived from the original on 10 March 2024. Retrieved 19 April 2024.
Assembly called for dracunculiasis's eradication. Dracunculiasis remains endemic in three countries: Chad, Mali, and South Sudan. Dracunculiasis is a disease...
Eradication of dracunculiasis is an ongoing program. Dracunculiasis, or Guinea worm disease, is an infection by the Guinea worm. In 1986, there were an...
(Guinea worm, dragon worm, fiery serpent) is a nematode that causes dracunculiasis, also known as guinea worm disease. The disease is caused by the female...
"Dracunculiasis Epidemiological Data (1989-2008)" (PDF). World Health Organization. Retrieved 14 September 2009. "Monthly report on dracunculiasis cases...
major parasitic disease that has been documented in early records is dracunculiasis. This disease is caused by the Guinea worm and is characterized by the...
disease, endocarditis, and bacterial vaginosis. It is effective for dracunculiasis, giardiasis, trichomoniasis, and amebiasis. It is an option for a first...
waterborne Nematode infections, one important waterborne nematode disease is Dracunculiasis. It is acquired by swallowing water in which certain copepoda occur...
sub-Saharan Africa". South Sudan is one of the few countries where dracunculiasis still occurs. At the time of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005...
alongside the World Health Organization to the near-eradication of dracunculiasis, also called Guinea worm disease. The incidence of this disease has...
2004. Archived from the original on 2013-12-09. Retrieved 2007-04-17. "Dracunculiasis". Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. 2005. Archived from the...
Guinea in 1942. He died of illness, presumed[according to whom?] to be Dracunculiasis at Wewak in September 1943. "Biography of Lieutenant-General Heisuke...
in the developing world. Specific parasites known to do this include dracunculiasis and myiasis. Surgery of an anal fistula to drain an abscess treats the...
established an independent International Commission for the Certification of Dracunculiasis Eradication (Guinea worm disease eradication; ICCDE).: 23 The ICCDE...
medinensis, or Guinea worm, a parasitic worm which causes the disease dracunculiasis, is now close to eradication thanks to efforts led by the Carter Center...
examined 759 people and found that 156, or 20.6%, had Guinea worm lesions. Dracunculiasis, the parasitical infection by the Guinea worm, is caused by drinking...
the Guinea worm (Dracunculus medinensis), the nematode that causes dracunculiasis disease in humans. This disease may be close to being eradicated through...
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