The Last Outpost of the Hated Guinea Worm

Nicholas Kristof is one of Cindy’s favorite writers, and I gotta agree, his pursuit of the gritty reality of the world is admirable and selfless.  He journeys to places few other Westerners are willing to travel, and reports again and again about people who are making a real difference in people’s lives.

One of these people is 85-year-old former President Jimmy Carter.  Carter vowed decades ago to lead the global fight against an odd enemy, that at one time made life miserable for as many as 3.5 million poor Africans. It’s Guinea worm disease, and in 2009, there were only 3200 cases. That’s real progress, and it comes down to understanding how this fiendish parasite lives.

The main realization that Kristof writes about is that the worms, which grow up to a yard long and poke out through people’s skin, emerge from their hiding places when victims seek out water to soothe the aches the critters create.  The minute they soak their bodies in water, the worm dumps larvae into the water, spreading their terrible plague to other humans.

Carter Center workers strive to keep infected Africans from going in ponds, instead, they trick the worm into coming out by dripping water on the blister. Then they begin pulling the worm out, a few inches a day, and as long as there is no pond for the larvae, the Guinea worm doesn’t spread.

Kristof goes to the southern part of Sudan, one of the few places in the world still plagued by the disease. “There is no school, no clinic, no store, not even a government road–just a path that villagers themselves carved into the bush. On my drive in, I came across several barefoot, barely clad hunters who had just killed a warthog with nothing but spears. I have rarely felt so inadequate.”

The reason, Kristof says, that the Carter Center has been successful is that they’ve put the villagers themselves in charge. The elders now fine anyone who enters a pond with a dangling worm…the penalty is one goat.