The next step was shown by Robert Thomson Leiper, who described in a 1907 paper that monkeys fed D. medinensis-infected Cyclops developed mature guinea worms, while monkeys directly fed D. medinensis larvae did not.In the 19th and 20th centuries, dracunculiasis was widespread across nearly all of Africa and South Asia, though we lack exact case counts from the pre-eradication era. In a 1947 article in the Journal of Parasitology, Norman R. Stoll used rough estimates of populations in endemic areas to suggest that there could be as many as 48 million cases of dracunculiasis per year. In 1976, the WHO estimated the global burden at 10 million cases per year. Ten years later, as the eradication effort was beginning, the WHO estimated 3.5 million cases per year worldwide. Etymology
Dracunculiasis Latin name, Dracunculus medinensis ("little dragon from Medina"), derives from its one-time high incidence in the city of Medina (in modern Saudi Arabia), and its common name, Guinea worm, is due to a similar past high incidence along the Guinea coast of West Africa. It is no longer endemic in either location. Eradication
The campaign to eradicate dracunculiasis began at the urging of the CDC in 1980. Following smallpox eradication (last case in 1977; eradication certified in 1981), dracunculiasis was considered an achievable eradication target since it was relatively uncommon and preventable with only behavioral changes.
Dracunculiasis, also called Guinea-worm disease, is a parasitic infection by the Guinea worm, Dracunculus medinensis. A person becomes infected by drinking water containing water fleas infected with guinea worm larvae. The worms penetrate the digestive tract and escape into the body. Around a year later, the adult worm migrates to an exit site – usually a lower limb – and induces an intensely painful blister on the skin. The blister eventually bursts to form an intensely painful open wound, from which the worm slowly crawls over several weeks. The wound remains painful throughout the worms emergence, disabling the infected person for the three to ten weeks it takes the worm to emerge. During this time, the open wound can become infected with bacteria, leading to death in around 1% of cases.There is no medication to treat dracunculiasis. Instead, the mainstay of treatment is the careful wrapping of the emerging worm around a small stick to encourage its exit. Each day, a few more centimeters of the worm emerge, and the stick is turned to maintain gentle tension. With too much tension, the worm can break and die in the wound, causing severe pain and swelling at the ulcer site. 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 water fleas, as well as public education campaigns to discourage people from soaking their emerging worms in sources of drinking water.