8 February 2007 - PANA. Former United States President Jimmy Carter on Thursday visited Guinea worm victims in Northern Ghana and reaffirmed his support to the country's fight to eradicate the guinea worm disease.
He said if this happened, funds allocated to fight the disease could then be channelled into other critical sectors of the country's economy.
He also called on stakeholders and other development partners to endeavour to combat the guinea worm menace and trachoma in the next two years.
President Carter was speaking at separate functions at Tingoli and Savelugu, guinea worm endemic communities in the Tolon/Kumbungu and Savelugu/Nanton Districts during his one-day official visit to the Northern Region.
 
The visit was to enable Carter to ascertain progress being made in the Northern Region by The Carter Centre and other development partners to eradicate the guinea worm disease and how best they could improve on their activities.
President Carter said that although the provision of potable water was not the only way to eradicate the disease, it was necessary to give the people decent and quality drinking water.
 
At Savelugu, President Carter saw how guinea worm infected persons were treated at the containment centre where over 100 afflicted children had assembled for treatment.
Carter"s visit to Ghana some 20 years ago inspired him 20 years ago to and lead an international coalition to eradicate Guinea worm disease, a debilitating parasitic infection that traps its victims in a cycle of poverty and pain for generations.
 
Ghana remains the most Guinea worm-endemic country in West Africa and second in the world only to war-torn Sudan. Other countries with the disease in Africa are Nigeria and Ethiopia.
Led by Carter, The Carter Centre has spearheaded a coalition of organizations in the global campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease since 1986.
 
The global Guinea worm eradication campaign is now fighting the last fraction of 1 percent of Guinea worm disease remaining in the world. Ghana accounts for nearly 17 percent of the approximately 25,000 cases reported in 2006. Almost all of the others can be found in war-torn Sudan.
Figures show that while Ghana swiftly reduced Guinea worm cases after the program started in 1987, surges in cases in the mid and late 1990s left Ghana ranking as the highest endemic country in the world in 2004, surpassing even Sudan, which had been fighting a civil war for more than 20 years.
 
By the end of 2006, Ghana reported 4,132 cases. Nearly half of affected Ghanaians are children younger than age 15.
Guinea worm is a parasitic, water-borne disease that is contracted when people consume stagnant water contaminated with microscopic fleas carrying infective larvae.
 
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