As human cases of dracunculiasis (guinea-worm disease) plummet, the International Commission for the Certification of Dracunculiasis Eradication is considering the introduction of a global cash reward to speed up the certification of all countries, even those with no previous history of the disease.
The Commission is an independent body which evaluates the status of countries and recommends to the Director-General of WHO whether a country should be certified as free of Dracunculus medinensis transmission.
During its 11th meeting (Geneva, 30 March 2016) the ICCDE also considered the outcome of a scientific meeting convened by WHO to discuss D. medinensis infection in dogs.
Other recommendations of the ICCDE are tabulated below:
- Plan the development and launch of a Global Reward one year after the last human case has been detected.
- Continue with aggressive use of abate (temephos) to kill the intermediate host and minimize any risk of transmission.
- Ensure early containment of all cases, preferably within 24 hours.
- Thoroughly investigate all new cases through an intensive case control approach to obtain as much information as possible to define conditions through which the case was acquired;
- Enhance measures to achieve maximum awareness among all populations in endemic and pre-certified countries on the availability of a cash reward.
- Continue to scale-up active surveillance in at-risk villages and pursue the integration of guinea-worm disease surveillance into other programmes such as polio, mass drug distribution for neglected tropical diseases, national immunization days.
- Further increase surveillance in at-risk border areas, notably the Chad–Central African Republic border (if security permits).
- Initiate focused research to define the role of dogs (particularly in Chad) and understand the unique epidemiology through new technologies such as GPS tracking of dogs and stable isotope analysis of food sources to verify whether aquatic animals are a source of infection in Chad.
- Maintain and enhance measures to identify infected dogs-reward for reporting infections and promote the tethering of dogs to prevent contamination of water bodies.