U.K. Pledges $31 Million to Help Wipe Out Guinea Worm Disease
11 min readBy Betsy McKay
The British government has pledged about $31 million to help eradicate guinea worm disease, a donation that public-health experts say will bring them close to finishing the job.
A quarter century ago, the crippling parasitic infection afflicted 3.5 million people a year in more than 20 countries. This year, there are expected to be just over 1,000 cases in four African countries. More than 98% of those cases are in South Sudan, with a few dozen in Ethiopia, Mali, and Chad.
Guinea worm disease is passed along when people drink water from sources containing water fleas that harbor guinea worm larvae. Once inside a human, the larvae spawn worms that can reach three feet in length. The worms incubate for a year and then emerge slowly through painful lesions. When people soak their lesion-covered limbs in water, the worms release larvae, starting the cycle all over again.
The 25-year-long push to eradicate guinea worm is championed by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Center in Atlanta has led the effort. The donation from the U.K. Department for International Development will be made over four years to the Carter Center.
According to the center, the best way to eliminate the disease is to “prevent people from entering sources of drinking water with an emerging guinea worm and to educate households to always use household or pipe filters to sieve out tiny water fleas carrying infective larvae.”
Donald Hopkins, vice president for health programs for the Carter Center, said $275 million, donated by several governments, has been spent so far wiping out the disease. The U.K. donation will go toward the $75 million the Carter Center estimates is needed to get the job done and to verify eradication.
“We’re very close,” says Hopkins, who has been working on guinea worm eradication since 1980. “This is going to happen. I can’t predict when, but it will be soon.” The Carter Center’s goal is to break the cycle of disease transmission in South Sudan next year, with no cases reported in 2013, he says. It would take three years of no cases to certify that the disease has been wiped out.
The donation comes as the U.K. is growing foreign-aid donations while implementing belt-tightening elsewhere, said Annabelle Malins, British Consul General in Atlanta. “We hope this will be a major tipping point to provide for the full funding requirement” for guinea worm eradication, she said.
Guinea worm disease would be the second human disease to be eradicated after smallpox, and the first to be wiped out without a vaccine or medical treatment. The disease hurts local agriculture in particular as it cripples workers temporarily during planting or harvests.
Image: Associated Press
UK gives £20m to global war on guinea worm
By Charlie Cooper
Thursday, 6 October 2011
The fight to eradicate the gruesome and debilitating “guinea worm” disease, making it only the second in the world to be wiped out after smallpox, is on the verge of success after it secured £20m funding from the Government.
Guinea worm afflicted 3.5 million people across 21 countries in 1986, but thanks to a campaign launched that year by former US President, Jimmy Carter, it is now confined to South Sudan, Ethiopia and Mali, afflicting only 1,797 people last year.
The disease is contracted by drinking water contaminated with microscopic worm larvae, which grow up to a metre long and emerge about a year later from the afflicted person’s body through a blister in the skin.
Britain has now become the first state donor to fund the campaign, which could exacerbate the wrath of many on the right of the Conservative Party, who have privately expressed concern that the Government is spending too much on foreign aid. There is no known cure or vaccine but aid efforts have focused on providing drinking water filters and educating vulnerable populations about the dangers of drinking contaminated water.
The disease is usually non-fatal but causes extreme pain and leaves sufferers bedridden for weeks or months. If the eradication drive is successful, it will follow smallpox into history and the species that causes it will be declared extinct.
Jimmy Carter paid tribute to the UK’s “willingness and staying power” in supporting his campaign, which hopes to achieve its goal by 2015, and called on other donors to “match the UK’s efforts”. The funding pledge from the Department for International Development (DFID) is dependent on other donors providing the additional £40m needed to achieve the Carter Foundation’s goals.
Dr John Hardman, president of the Carter Foundation, praised the DFID for leading the developed world on international aid.
“We have had a strong partnership with DFID for years and to hear about this additional grant was music to our ears,” he said. “DFID exemplify how we can form partnerships to attack challenging problems and diseases in the developing world.”
The disease by numbers
99.95% The fall in sufferers from guinea worm disease over the past 25 years.
£60m The total amount of money the Carter Centre believes is needed to eradicate the disease forever.
£950m The amount of the DFID’s annual £8.1bn budget spent on health projects.
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Jimmy Carter asks for cash to wipe out guinea worm
LONDON
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is appealing for other donors to join Britain in a multi-million dollar campaign to wipe out guinea worm, a crippling and painful parasitic disease that now exists only in four African countries.
At a press briefing in London on Wednesday, British officials are expected to pledge 20 million pounds (US$31 million) over four years to the cause — but only if other donors also open their wallets.
The global campaign to eradicate guinea worm started in 1980, when there were about 3.5 million cases of the disease, also known as dracunculiasis, every year across Africa and Asia.
Since then, cases have dropped by more than 99 percent, but the disease remains a problem in South Sudan, Ethiopia, Mali and Chad. Last year, there were 1,797 cases.
The Carter Center and partners, including the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, aim to get rid of guinea worm disease by 2015.
There is no treatment or cure; the disease is eliminated by stopping people from drinking dirty water and by preventing infected people from wading into water and spreading the disease. Health campaigns that focus on changing behavior are often more difficult to implement than those that rely on medicines or vaccines.
Smallpox is the only disease in history to have been eradicated, while another effort to get rid of polio is also ongoing.
People get infected with guinea worm when they drink water infected with the larvae of the parasite.
About a year after someone is infected, the spaghetti-like worm, which can grow up to 1 meter in length, bursts out of their foot. That painful process can take months, often leaves the patient bedridden, and involves winding the worm around a stick so it doesn’t break.
Guinea worm disease “prevents people from escaping poverty,” Carter said in a statement. “I welcome the challenge laid down by the British government. I call on other donors to match their efforts.”
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9Q658H00.htm
Britain will back a final push to wipe out a debilitating parasitic worm disease that is on the verge of worldwide eradication.
Former President Jimmy Carter, World Health Organization’s director-general Margaret Chan and British officials in London, announced Wednesday a new campaign to rid the world of the Guinea worm, making it the second disease to be eradicated.
The British government pledged about $30 million in eradication efforts. International Development Minister Stephen O’Brien and Carter emphasized the need for donors to match the funds to get rid of the guinea worm.
“The eradication of guinea worm is within our sights,” O’Brien said. “But it does still remain unfinished business, mainly for the poorest people in remote regions of the remaining four endemic countries where the worm persists.”
The first disease to be wiped off the earth was smallpox, which was eliminated through vaccines.
Unlike smallpox, the Guinea worm disease is not fatal. But there is no treatment for it and there’s no vaccine to prevent infection either, according t to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This disease can, however, cause permanent disabilities to people, crippling their livelihood and local economies.
The key to eradicating the disease is access to clean water and changes in people’s behavior because the parasitic Guinea worm lives in stagnant water. When a person drinks the contaminated water, the worm grows inside its human host for a year until it emerges through the skin, causing great pain and in some cases, infections. The worm has been described in the Bible and Ancient Egyptian and Greek texts.
Graphic: How the guinea worm infects a person
Today, the worm is far less pervasive. Statistics from 2010 show that 1,797 cases remain in the world, in four countries: Ethiopia, Mali, Chad and mostly South Sudan.
“For most of the world, this is an invisible worm – out of sight, out of mind, because it affects the poorest of the poor, people living in remote, rural areas,” said Chan from the WHO.
Carter commended the British government for “its willingness and staying power to help eradicate this debilitating disease,” and called on donors to match their efforts. The goal is to stop the transmission of the guinea worm before 2015.
Unlike diseases like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, guinea worm is a little known disease. The Carter Center, based in Atlanta, Georgia, has led public health efforts tackling neglected diseases most Americans have never heard of.
“We have a policy at our center of undertaking difficult projects, quite often which no one else wants to adopt,” Carter said during the press conference. “Perhaps one of the most vivid examples of this has been guinea worm.”
Since 1986, the center’s efforts have focused on health education, training of health workers and village volunteers who monitor and treat patients. The center has also supplied simple tools for clean drinking water and village-based education on avoiding the disease.
The greatest threat remains in the world’s newest country, South Sudan, which has about 6,000 villages under surveillance by 12,000 health volunteers.
Calling the remaining cases “unfinished business,” O’Brien said health officials had reason for cautious optimism. “We know the final mile can often be the longest part of the journey. ”
http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/05/efforts-to-end-worm-disease-get-british-boost/
Jimmy Carter spearheads final drive to eradicate guinea worm disease
£60m needed to finish the job and wipe crippling condition from the planet
The world is tantalisingly close to eradicating guinea worm disease, which would make it only the second disease of humans to be wiped from the planet, according to former US president Jimmy Carter.
Speaking in London alongside World Health Organisation director general Dr Margaret Chan, Carter, who has led the fight against the disease, said that around £60m more was needed to finish the job.
Since the Carter Centre took up the cause in 1986, almost every nation had eradicated the crippling and painful disease, said the former president. “It is likely by the end of this year we will have guinea worm in only one country – the newest one on earth – South Sudan,” he added.
In 1995 Carter personally negotiated a six-month ceasefire between northern and southern Sudan, in a successful attempt to reach remote villages where guinea worm larvae infest drinking water, causing immense suffering to some of the poorest men, women and children on earth.
“The Carter Centre’s programme is designed to go into the places where the needs are greatest and quite often where the needs are neglected by others,” said the former president. “We couldn’t get into southern Sudan because of the war.”
In 1995 the leaders of north and south agreed the longest-ever ceasefire in the conflict, enabling volunteers to reach remote rural villages. They knew, said Carter, that “guinea worm was a blight on the people. There was an inseparable connection between peace on the one hand and doing away with guinea worm on the other.” Carter eventually helped negotiate peace and his centre monitored the national elections in 2010 and the referendum on separation this year.
Since 1986, 3.5m cases of guinea worm disease in 21 countries have been reduced by 99.9%. Now there are fewer than 1,000 a year.
In 1979, while Carter was president, the eradication of smallpox was declared. That cost £195m and was achieved through mass vaccination – a feat that is being attempted in polio but which looks difficult to repeat with the increased movement of populations.
Guinea worm eradication, a generation later, has so far cost £250m and is close to being achieved without recourse to vaccination or treatments, because they do not exist. The disease is being prevented through the drilling of wells for uncontaminated water and education of those who live in remote rural villages. People have been taught to filter their drinking water through a small pipe, cheaply made and distributed, which removes the guinea worm larvae.
The effort to reach the remotest villages has paid dividends, said Carter. “When we go in to a place like South Sudan, we have personally trained about 12,000 local volunteers and taught them aspects of healthcare and about good water that is clean to drink. We have often been able to dig deep wells that are free from disease.”
There have been other benefits too. “In the rest of their lives, many have never known success. They have never attempted anything that really succeeded. Quite often their relationship to foreigners has comprised broken promises. When we go in and teach them how they can correct their own problem, they not only learn the rudiments of healthcare and sanitation but they learn how to be self-sufficient and gain self-respect,” he said.
Stephen O’Brien, international development minister, pledged on Wednesday the UK government would provide up to one-third of the funding needed for the campaign against the guinea worm. But the amount of the British donation is dependent on how much is put in by others – the Department for International Development will put in £1 for every £2 from elsewhere, he said.
O’Brien added that discussions were taking place with other donors, but that it would be premature to reveal their identities. “I very much hope they will produce a response to the challenge,” he said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/05/jimmy-carter-eradicate-guinea-worm-disease?newsfeed=true
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