In a statement made available to PANA in New York, the UN health agency stated named the countries as Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Djibouti, Tanzania, Zambia, Gabon, Swaziland, Mozambique, Cameroon, Algeria and the Central African Republic (CAR).
 
It said the "12 countries have stamped out guinea worm and the world will be free of the parasitic disease within two years". It said that while some three million people suffered from the disease in the early 1980s, it now affects about 25,000 people in nine African countries, with more prevalence in Sudan and Ghana.
 
"Guinea worm causes large ulcers, normally in the lower leg, that can swell to the size of a tennis ball and burst, releasing a spaghetti- like parasitic worm that can be 0.8 meters long," it explained.
 
Burning pain often prompts victims to jump into nearby water holes, which can be their communities' only source of drinking water. The worm then releases thousands of larvae, which are ingested by water fleas that spread the disease further.
 
"When a person drinks the water, they are in effect drinking the disease," the WHO said in the statement, noting that pain from guinea worm could incapacitate farmers and cause children to miss school for months at a time. "The disease keeps its victims imprisoned in a cycle of pain and poverty," it noted.
 
WHO also disclosed that it had intensified efforts to contain the infections and stop the disease from spreading, citing efforts to protect water supplies, filter drinking water and kill water fleas as some of the ways to check its spread.
 
The Commission for the Certification of Dracunculiasis (guinea worm) Eradication, a WHO-created body of scientific experts, has declared 180 countries as guinea worm-free since 1995 and aims to wipe out the disease by 2009.
 
WHO, however, stated that the disease still exists in Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Sudan and Togo.
 
Sudan has an estimated 20,000 cases and Ghana has about 4,000,the agency added. 27 March 2007 - PANA
 
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