Around 1% of dracunculiasis cases result in death from secondary infections of the wound.When dracunculiasis was widespread, it would often affect entire villages at once. Outbreaks occurring during planting and harvesting seasons severely impair a communitys agricultural operations – earning dracunculiasis the moniker "empty granary disease" in some places. Communities affected by dracunculiasis also see reduced school attendance as children of affected parents must take over farm or household duties, and affected children may be physically prevented from walking to school for weeks.Infection does not create immunity, so people can repeatedly experience dracunculiasis throughout their lives. Prevention
There is no vaccine for dracunculiasis, and once infected with D. medinensis there is no way to prevent the disease from running its full course. Consequently, nearly all effort to reduce the burden of dracunculiasis focuses on preventing the transmission of D. medinensis from person to person. This is primarily accomplished by filtering drinking water to physically remove copepods. Nylon filters, finely woven cloth, or specialized filter straws are all effective means of copepod removal. Sources of drinking water can be treated with the larvicide temephos, which kills copepods. Where possible, open sources of drinking water are replaced by deep wells that can serve as new sources of clean water. Public education campaigns inform people in affected areas how dracunculiasis spreads and encourage those with the disease to avoid soaking their wounds in bodies of water that are used for drinking. Epidemiology
Dracunculiasis is nearly eradicated, with just 15 cases reported worldwide in 2021.
Infections of domestic dogs have been particularly common in Chad, where they helped reignite dracunculiasis transmission in 2010. Dogs are thought to be infected by eating a paratenic host, likely a fish or amphibian. As with humans, prevention efforts have focused on preventing infection by encouraging people in affected areas to bury fish entrails as well as to identify and tie up dogs with emerging worms so that they cannot access drinking water sources until after the worms have emerged. Domestic ferrets can be infected with D. medinensis in laboratory settings, and have been used as an animal disease model for human dracunculiasis.Different Dracunculus species can infect snakes, turtles, and other mammals. Animal infections are most widespread in snakes, with nine different species of Dracunculus described in snakes in the United States, Brazil, India, Vietnam, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Benin, Madagascar, and Italy. The only other reptile affected is the snapping turtle with infected common snapping turtles described in several U.S. states, and a single infected South American snapping turtle described in Costa Rica. Infections of other mammals are limited to the Americas. Raccoons in the U.S. and Canada are most widely impacted, particularly by D. insignis; however, Dracunculus worms have also been reported in American skunks, coyotes, foxes, opossums, domestic dogs, domestic cats, and (rarely) muskrats and beavers. Notes
References
Works cited
External links

"Guinea Worm Disease Eradication Program". Carter Center.