The Guinea worm eradication effort: lessons for the future.

The dracunculiasis (Guinea worm) eradication campaign has specific implications for efforts to control other emerging infectious diseases. Guinea worm, a painful disfiguring disease, affects primarily adults, who often become ill in very large numbers (usually 30% or more of a village’s population) during the planting or harvest season. The disease used to be transmitted in parts of Asia and in Africa in open standing stagnant water. The intermediate host of the parasite, the copepod, contains the larva of the worm in such open drinking water; these organisms are barely visible in a glass of drinking water held up to the light. Thirteen years ago, the disease was still endemic in parts of the Indian subcontinent, a small part of Pakistan and India, Yemen, and the band of countries across Africa from east to west.