Prevention is proving better than cure yet again. The parasitic Guinea worm – which grows up to 60 centimetres long and is usually extracted painfully by hand – faces eradication by 2009. And that’s without the aid of drugs. Instead, millions of Africans broke the cycle of infection by following a global prevention campaign led by the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia.
Guinea worms mainly infect people who drink water contaminated with fleas that carry the worm larvae. These grow in the body, but must re-emerge to reach water and complete their life cycle by producing more larvae.
The eradication programme, started…
