80 percent of world’s guinea worm disease in Sudan: minister

KHARTOUM, Sept 19 (AFP) — Eighty percent of the world’s guinea worm infection is in Sudan, mainly in the south of the country, a press report said Friday, quoting Sudanese Health Minister Ahmed Bilal Osman.

Osman was quoted by the state-run Al Anbaa daily as saying that of Sudan’s total share of the disease 98 percent is in the 10 southern states, and 90 percent in areas controlled by rebels.

The minister is to travel to Atlanta, Georgia, to take part in a conference sponsored by former US president Jimmy Carter’s Global 2000 programme on September 26 to discuss the Carter Center’s plans for eradicating the disease.

He attributed the spread of the disease to the ongoing civil war which he said hinders access by control teams to the infected areas.

Guinea worm disease is contracted when stagnant water, contaminated with microscopic fleas carrying infective larvae, is consumed. The larvae mature and grow in the body, sometimes as long as three feet (one metre), before slowly emerging after a year through an agonizingly painful blister in the skin.

According to the Carter Center website, the numbers afflicted by the debilitating disease have been reduced worldwide by 98 percent, from 3.5 million cases in 1986 to less than 65,000 in 2001, mainly through a programme of education in treatment and filtration of water.