Dracunculus medinensis

1: Life cycle of D. medinensis (CDC, 2015). This report will explain the course and geographical distribution of dracunculiasis as well as its public health impacts. Furthermore, it will elucidate how the incident was managed and policies implemented in eradicating the little monster. INCIDENT REPORT AND GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION Dracunculiasis is a disease that has ravaged human population for decades; the presence of disease is documented in the Egyptian Medical Ebers Papyrus of herbal knowledge around 1550BC when a calcified worm was detected on an Egyptian mummy (Sandle, 2014). According to Sattenspiel (2000), the ancient existence of dracunculiasis is said to be the origin of the medical symbol, the rod of Asclepius which depicts the conventional style of extracting…

Tropical areas of the world are heavily ravaged by the burdens of parasitic diseases. While malaria attracts much of the attention, there are still unreasonable burdens placed on communities by other filarial infections such as Onchocerciasis. Recently, there have been effective strategies used to eradicate Dracunculus medinensis from almost all endemic areas. Both Onchocerca and Dracunculus are nematodes they are radially symmetrical, have three tissue layers, and have a hydrostatic skeleton.…