Posted on 01/13/2015 10:54:36 AM PST by blam
Kevin Loria
January 13, 2015
Humanity is close to eradicating a human disease from the face of the earth for the second time in history. (The first eradicated human disease was smallpox, which last infected someone in 1977.)
That's pretty incredible — but it's a project that has required close to three decades of work, and it isn't finished.
On Monday, former US President Jimmy Carter announced at the opening of "Countdown to Zero: Defeating Disease," a new exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, that there were just 126 cases of Guinea worm disease left in the world.
In 1986, when the Carter Center began leading the effort to eradicate Guinea worm, there were approximately 3.5 million cases in 20 countries, including India, Pakistan, and Yemen, with the rest in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Now, "we know everybody who has Guinea worm," Carter said at the exhibit opening. And healthcare workers have those 126 people carefully isolated, so they shouldn't be able to infect anyone else.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
“ExCUUSe while whip this out...”
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