The community in Jarweng village thought they’d seen the end of Guinea worm in 2014, but last year the remote settlement of some 500 people became the epicenter of South Sudan’s latest outbreak, recording four of the country’s six cases.
Nyingong Aguek and her 13 and seven-year-old sons contracted the worm after drinking from a swamp while traveling outside their village in May 2021.
“Having the worm pulled out is more painful than giving birth,” said the 30-year-old. Sitting under a tree outside her yard she points to the scars on her left leg where four worms emerged last August.
Despite the agony, thanks to the Carter Center, treatment wasn’t half as painful as it was when she contracted it as a girl, she said.
Running her fingers over a much larger scar, also on her lower left leg, Aguek said before the Carter Center came to South Sudan, locals would cut open Guinea worm blisters with a knife, often damaging a nerve and not bandaging the wound, which would become infected, causing permanent damage.
After the worm was removed from her leg when she was nine, Aguek said she couldn’t walk for a month.
“When I had Guinea worm as a child, it was operated and cut, but the second time when I had Guinea worm the Carter Center helped me. They pulled the worm and I wasn’t operated on again,” she said.
In 2017, after years of no cases, the Carter Center stopped working in Awerial county, where the remote village of Jarweng is situated.
Since the emergence of last year’s cases, however, it’s returned with its staff and volunteers walking house to house raising awareness about what Guinea worm looks like and distributing water filters and training people how to use them.
The organization’s also started teachings on how to search for Guinea worm in animals, as one of the six new cases was found in a dog.
Reuters/Hauwa M.
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