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posted by janrinok on Sunday October 06 2019, @07:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the which-end? dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

The End Of Guinea Worm Was Just Around the Corner. Not Anymore

Next year was supposed to be the end of the line for Guinea worm.

The epic, decades-long campaign against the parasite — which humans and animals can contract from drinking water and which, about a year later, emerges as a worm up to 3 feet long from painful lesions on the feet or legs — has been one of the big success stories in modern global health. In the 1980s, more than 3 million people in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia contracted Guinea worm annually. Last year, that number was down to 28.

Former President Jimmy Carter, who turned 95 this week and whose nonprofit Carter Center has led much of the Guinea worm eradication effort, has said that he would "like for the last Guinea worm to die before I do."

But that goal moved further out of reach this week, when the World Health Organization quietly revealed that it has moved its expected Guinea worm eradication date, which had been 2020, ahead a decade, to 2030. The change was first reported in Nature.

Over the past few years, the eradication effort has faced a series of setbacks. Last year, South Sudan, one of the countries hit hardest by the parasite, declared victory over it. But only a few months later a new outbreak surfaced there.

In 2013, researchers began to notice that in Chad, Guinea worm was proliferating among dogs — including some cases in which a single dog could carry more than 60 worms. The number of known infected dogs in Chad is rising, from a few hundred cases at first to as many as 2,000 this year. The parasite also seems to be spreading among baboons in Ethiopia.

[...] "We redefined eradication as elimination of transmission in animals as well as in humans," Breman says. "We're not exactly sure when the last dog or other animal will give up their worms. So that means there will be this delay."


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 06 2019, @07:58AM (7 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 06 2019, @07:58AM (#903316) Journal

    Disagree. It's hard as hell to eradicate anything. Life is like that. When you start to whip life's ass, it transforms in some way, even if it has to mutate. TFS pretty clearly states that these nasty little critters are making happy little homes in hosts that weren't so alluring in the past. They used to love humans, now they are moving into dog hosts, and baboons.

    What's even more likely than the worms changing their way of life, is that we simply didn't notice that dogs and baboons were infected in the past. Humans have a pretty short attention span. We aren't really good at noticing things that are peripheral to our attention, either. The researcher who was focused on curing humans of this parasite wasn't likely looking very hard at dogs and baboons, and - whatever else.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06 2019, @01:08PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06 2019, @01:08PM (#903342)

    Yea, well that's the definition they should have used to begin with then. The definition everyone thinks of...But they couldn't because it had already been gamed for political purposes regarding measles and polio.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 06 2019, @01:28PM (2 children)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 06 2019, @01:28PM (#903349) Journal

      I'm not real sure that your point is accurate. Polio? I'm not aware of any creature on earth that harbors the polio virus. Presuming that no other animal hosts that virus, if and when no human is infected with that virus, we can presume that polio actually has been eradicated. I don't think we have to count artificial, intentional infections of research animals, for that purpose.

      Measles? Can we get measles from animals? Again, I don't think that is a real concern. Dogs can get distemper, which is related to measles, but the diseases don't jump from dog to humans, or humans to dogs. I guess other animals develop diseases that are related to measles and distemper, but again, I don't think they jump species.

      So, I'm not going to say that you're "wrong", but I'm pretty sure that you're kinda missing the point. If a disease only affects humans, then we can say that the disease is eradicated when no more humans have the disease.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06 2019, @01:51PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06 2019, @01:51PM (#903357)

        No, it is you missing the point by focusing on this weird harbored by animals detail. The point is they are always changing the definitions of eradicated, eliminated, etc to suit whatever current agenda. Look here you have "measles eradicated in the Americas" even though there are still cases in the Americas: https://www.newsweek.com/measles-eradicated-americas-503521 [newsweek.com]

        • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 06 2019, @03:30PM

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 06 2019, @03:30PM (#903379) Journal

          Oh-kay, you win on that one.

          "As long as there's the measles virus circulating elsewhere in the world, there will be cases in the Americas," Moss says. That's because the interconnectedness of our world today and global air travel means that measles can always be imported from other regions, where the disease is still very much a problem.

          The effort to eradicate measles in the Americas began in 1994. To be declared measles-free, a country must have no cases originating within its borders for at least 12 continuous months. The region's last known endemic case occurred in Venezuela in 2002.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06 2019, @01:30PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06 2019, @01:30PM (#903350)

    Disagree. It's hard as hell to eradicate anything. Life is like that.

    Actually, it's rather easy. The only problem here is that we *and* our pets are the ones on the menu. If this parasite Then you combine that with the shit living standards in places like most of South Sudan and the area (no running water, no sanitation) and you get what you get. Just 100 years ago, most of southern US was infested with parasites but today that problem is mostly even out of memory of most.

    https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-a-worm-gave-the-south-a-bad-name/ [pbs.org]

    And this is just *part of* the infestations

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @04:03AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @04:03AM (#903583)

      Most of the southern US is *still* infested with parasites, but they also evolved to live in colder places like Detroit and Chicago.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Sunday October 06 2019, @06:28PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 06 2019, @06:28PM (#903460) Journal

    I suspect, however, that zoonosis was happening all along, but that they just didn't notice it as long as humans were widely affected, and that no transformation is indicated in this case. And also that dogs are likely to not be the only secondary carrier.

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