Is it now bon nuit to guinea worm?

When former Nigerian leader, General Yakubu Gowon visited Agbaragba, a rural community in Keana local government area, south of Nasarawa State, penultimate week, his mission was simple: to spray chemicals in the water sources of the community for the control of guinea worm.  The former head of state also announced to the peasants that his […]

When former Nigerian leader, General Yakubu Gowon visited Agbaragba, a rural community in Keana local government area, south of Nasarawa State, penultimate week, his mission was simple: to spray chemicals in the water sources of the community for the control of guinea worm.  The former head of state also announced to the peasants that his organization would give the sum of N10,000 to  anybody  who reported any case of guinea worm infection in Nasarawa State to the authorities.  It was as if General Gowon had sent the villagers on a bounty hunt.  

According to the former Nigerian ruler, any reported case of guinea worm infection would be subjected to verification by the appropriate international agencies or health experts. This is to help him in the report he will be preparing to the World Health Organization (WHO) which seeks to  the certify Nigeria as a guinea worm free nation as as a result of  sustained eradication efforts by The Carter Centre, founded by former American President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosallynn Carter, in 1982.

why gowon challenged the people

General Gowon who heads the centre in Nigeria, as does other former leaders of the world in their respective countries, was chosen by Jimmy Carter when the former American leader visited Nigeria in 1987. The visit, which took Carter to various parts of the country on an investigation, led to the discovery of the endemic case of guinea worm in 21 states, following which Carter used his centre as a base for a project for the eradication of guinea worm.

 The certification which General Gowon sought was to declare that Nigeria, once under the grip of the disease, is now free from it. The parasitic disease has no vaccine or medicine for cure only prevention.

When the centre began the campaign for the eradication guinea worm in 1986, there were an estimated 3.5 million cases of the disease in 20 countries in Africa and Asia. Today, the effort has reduced the prevalence to fewer than 5,000 cases in six African countries of Sudan, Ghana, Mali, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Niger, the centre declared on its website..

how guinea worm affected agbaragba

In Nasarawa State, Agbaragba, a rural community in Keana, was one of the most endemic at the time of discovery. An elder spoken to at the time of Gowon’s penultimate visit told Sunday Trust that the disease, which is often referred to as the fiery serpent, devastated the community. The young and old, many of them good “farm hands,” were incapacitated by the infection. Elder Inda Yakubu, as he gave his name, said, however, that he was lucky to have escaped the disease throughout the period it wreaked havoc on Agbaragba, a predominantly peasant community.

Often known as the “fiery serpent,” guinea worm disease (dracunculiasis) has existed since ancient times. The disease is contracted when a person drinks stagnant water that is contaminated with microscopic water fleas carrying infective larvae. Inside such a victim’s body, the larvae grows for a year, becoming thin thread-like worms, up to 3-feet-long. These worms create agonizingly painful blisters in the skin, through which they slowly exit the body. The worm release hundreds of thousands of eggs, or larvae, into the water, so anytime a person carrying it enters into water, he or she is putting others who benefit from such source at risk of infection.  Water fleas then eat the larvae, and people who drink unfiltered water from the pond become infected-continuing the life cycle of the parasite.

The impact on communities is grave, according to Carter Centre’s website. The presence of the disease is an indicator of extreme poverty, including the absence of safe drinking water, in a community. Entire communities suffer, not just the individuals afflicted with the worm. Victims are totally incapacitated as a worm emerges from their body. Children cannot attend school. Farmers cannot farm, the site says, adding that “communities suffer food shortages when their residents are unable to work.”

Agbaragba, like other communities with prevalence of the worm, suffered these grave impacts between 1999 and 2009. Inda, whose former neighbour was infected in the mid-90s, told our correspondent that his neighbour’s left leg was crippled and he was could not be successfully removed through traditional practice.

“The infected leg swelled up. We tried to roll out the treat from the leg, but it cut midway, and the remaining part could not come out. This badly affected the leg”, Inda explained.

traditional method of treating guinea worm victims

The traditional method of removing the worm from the body, according to the villagers, is by applying palm oil on the affected part, after which the traditional medicine man would wait for some time. The period of waiting can last for as long as it takes the worm to rear its head. It is believed that the worm rears the head to lick the palm oil, which villagers say, is a vitality that aids its growth inside the human body.

Although, for ages, they suffered from the attack of this fiery serpent of no-known-origin, the people of Agbaragba and other communities in Nasarawa and the neighbouring states remained completely ignorant about how to fight the spread of the disease. But through the partnership with the Carter Centre, Yakubu Gowon Centre and government at all levels to the villages, this fiery serpent now seems to be existing only in villagers’ memory, and not in their flesh anymore.

Through General Gowon, the partnership’s eradication effort empowered and educated communities to take measures to prevent the disease from spreading and recurring. Specifically, the Carter Centre and the Gowon Centre provided boreholes to the villages for safe drinking water, especially in areas where people depended on stagnant water bodies which leads to the risk of infection. Also the former head of state went  to villages himself, and applied chemicals to unsafe water sources, although he met with stiff resistance in some areas. The two centres provided villagers with fine-mesh filter cloths that fit over clay pots used to hold water.  

Nasarawa State government, on its part, embarked on a scheme for massive provision of boreholes to communities to end the persistent scarcity, which often compelled villagers to drink from untreated sources.