How To Beat Guinea Worm Infection

3.5 Million People in Africa and Asia can DefeatGuinea Using Simple Methods

Given all the talk about thehepatitis C drugSovaldiin recent weeks, as well as the high prices on many other recent innovations, you might think that we're entering a time when leaps forward happen only at great cost. That misses the point. It also strengthens the false notion that we can move forward only through advances in technology. As I said inanother columnnot long ago, people are more important than technology.

To illustrate this point, let's talk about the Guinea worm.

Formally known asDracunculus medensis, the Guinea worm is a parasite that plagues humans, and only humans. People become infected when they drink water that's infested with the worm's larvae. After mating inside their hosts' gastrointestinal tracts, the female worms eventually grow to almost a yard long, then push their way to the skin and createsoresby which they can leave the body. They exit very slowly, causing excruciating, burning pain as they do so.

There is no treatment for guinea worms. There's no vaccine. The best we can do is to wrap the part of the worm that's exposed around a stick and slowly pull it out. That cantake weeks. One of the few ways to soothe the pain is to submerge the worm and the sore in water, which is, of course, exactly what you don't want to do, as it allows the worm to release its larvae and start the cycle over again.

In 1986, it was estimated that more than 3.5 million people in Africa and Asia were infected with guinea worms.

This year, so far, there have been only 17 cases worldwide. It's thought that very soon, Guinea worm disease will be only thesecond disease eradicated in human history.

How? There's been no technological breakthrough. No new medicine. No new therapy. Guinea worm infection has been beaten almost entirely through behavioral change, at a shockingly low cost.

Two things needed to happen to achieve this feat. The first is that people needed to be taught to filter their drinking water, often with something as simple as a cloth. The second is that people had to learn not to go near drinking water sources once they were infected.

Many doubted that you could eradicate a problem like this without a medical breakthrough. They were wrong.

Clean your water. Practice hygiene. Quarantine the infected. These ideas sound simple. They sound like common sense. They also work.

Lest people think this is a story relevant only to the third world, these general problems are pervasive in our health care system.

Physicians know how important hand washing is, but we fail to do it correctly amajority of the time. This is in spite of the fact that hospitalized patients get more than700,000 infections a year, and that hand hygiene is thought to be one of the best ways to prevent this from happening.

We spend so much time focusing on the new, the flashy and the innovative. It's important not to neglect the simple things that matter. Eradicating the Guinea worm didn't require research, new technology or billions of dollars of investment. It took determination, focus and dedication. It required people, and talking, and educating.

Source: The New York Times

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