What is Guinea worm disease, and how do people get it?
PD: Guinea worm comes from contaminated water sources during the dry part of the year. Everyone in the community is drinking out of the same contaminated water sources. So what happens is that it’s a worm that emerges from, usually, the lower parts of the body. A person will have one in his or her leg, and then they will walk into the water, a large reservoir or dam, and they walk in to fetch water for their house. When the worm comes in to contact with water, it lays an egg—actually it lays thousands of eggs—and those eggs are then ingested by another parasite called a copepod, and then people will drink the copepod, and their stomach will destroy the copepod. Then the Guinea worm egg will hatch inside of their stomach, and eventually it works its way out of the leg, and then the cycle starts all over again. EH: How does Guinea worm disease affect the people of your community in Ghana? PD: Well, when I got toWantugu, it was the second most endemic community in the country. We were get
