A podcast, think it was Stuff to Blow Your Mind, did a podcast on the Guinea Worm and talked about this at length. The worm is wildly infectious. Every incident requires immediate deployment of teams of people to control it or it explodes with re-infections. There are wild populations of the worm still, which are the main source of ongoing infections.
The 28 cases doesn't indicate low importance, it indicates those are enough to re-seed the worm if huge areas if not vigorously acted on, every time they see a new case.
I'm surely getting some details wrong, but it sounds like zero for several years has to be the goal, or it'll rebound swiftly.
The 28 cases doesn't indicate low importance, it indicates those are enough to re-seed the worm if huge areas if not vigorously acted on, every time they see a new case.
I'm surely getting some details wrong, but it sounds like zero for several years has to be the goal, or it'll rebound swiftly.