World moves closer to eradicating Guinea worm disease

CDC’s flu tracking program to continue

JOHANNESBURG, Jan 21, (Agencies): A new report says the world is moving closer to eradicating Guinea worm disease, in which a meter-long worm slowly emerges from a blister in a person’s skin.

The US-based Carter Center, which leads the eradication campaign, says just 30 cases were reported last year in isolated areas of Ethiopia and Chad. All 15 cases in Ethiopia occurred at a farm where workers drank unfiltered water from a contaminated pond.

Mali has not reported any cases in 25 months, and civil war-torn South Sudan has reported no cases in 13 months. The Carter Center called that a “major accomplishment.”

The incapacitating disease three decades ago affected more than 3 million people in 21 countries in Africa and Asia. The meter-long worm incubates in people for up to a year before painfully emerging, often through extremely sensitive parts of the body.

“It was more painful than giving birth,” one South Sudan resident, Rejina Bodi, told The Associated Press last year. “Childbirth ends but this pain persists.”

Unlike other diseases which are controlled by medicines or vaccines, Guinea worm can be eradicated by educating people how to filter and drink clean water.

Globally, the Guinea worm program is entering the final stretch, though the World Health Organization warns that the remaining cases can be the most difficult to control as they usually occur in remote and often inaccessible areas.

Also: CHICAGO: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will continue its work tracking one of the worst flu seasons the United States has seen in several years even if the federal government shuts down on Saturday, senior administration officials said on Friday.

The program collects data on flu activity, hospitalizations, pediatric deaths and tests the efficacy of the flu vaccine.

Earlier, the Department of Health and Human Services had released a contingency plan in case the Senate failed to pass a stopgap spending measure by a midnight deadline. According to that plan, the CDC’s flu tracking program would be suspended during a shutdown.

But late Friday night, officials told reporters on a conference call that the program would continue.

“CDC specifically will be continuing their ongoing influenza surveillance. They will be collecting data reported by states, hospitals, others, and theyll be reporting out critical information needed for state and local health authorities to provide, track, prevent and treat the disease,” an official said.

A spokesperson for the CDC was not immediately available for comment.

SAO PAULO: The government of Brazil’s southeastern state of Minas Gerais has decreed a state of emergency for its public health system due to an outbreak of yellow fever in 94 of its 853 cities.

The decree was published Saturday in the state’s official gazette and allows the government to contract health providers without going through a bidding process.

Since July 2017, 35 cases of yellow fever have been confirmed in Brazil and 20 people have died, according to the latest figures from the health ministry.