Dracunculiasis eradication: global surveillance summary, 2025

D. medinensis transmission has now been reduced to historically low levels. It is encouraging that most countries have maintained zero-case incidence against a background of functioning surveillance systems and intensively-promoted incentive schemes for confirmed human cases and animal infections. However, eradication has proven more complex and required more years of programme activity than was originally anticipated. The target still feels some distance away. The persistence of sporadic human cases, transmission involving non-human mammalian definitive hosts, and re-emergence of transmission in areas that were previously believed to have achieved interruption all point to the need for sustained, high quality surveillance, rigorous epidemiological investigation and intensified interventions in identified foci, and renewed consideration of programme refinements and innovation.