A new worm is out there

Timothy Miles

The guinea worm or dracunculiasis is a worm that transfers its larvae to a water flea that is found mainly in Africa. The guinea worm stays in your stomach and grows to be as long as 3 feet while remaining as thin as angel hair pasta.

The worm secretes its larvae into the water and a water flea picks it up. Then a human drinks the water with the flea in it, and that person’s digestive system kills the flea but the larvae stays in the stomach and grows. The male worm dies when it mates, but the female lives on and on. The worm causes swelling and painful, burning blisters when it gets into the lower limbs of its host. The worm is most common in Africa except for a few remote villages in the Rajastan desert of India and in Yemen. Other countries such as Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Niger, Ghana, Mali, Uganda, Togo, Benin, and Ivory Coast have more than 1,000 cases each year. There is no cure for the guinea worm except to remove it by winding it around a small stick and pulling it out. The worm can be surgically removed only before the wound begins to swell. Infection can easily be avoided, even in areas where the disease is very common, by using only water that has been filtered or obtained from a safe source. Water can be boiled, filtered through tightly woven nylon cloth, or treated with a larvae-killing chemical.

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