Date: 2017-04-07

The Kwara Government says it will reward any resident who reports any suspected case of guinea worm infection with N25,000. Mr Peter Oyinloye, the Kwara State Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) Programme Coordinator, made the promise while speaking with newsmen in Ilorin on Friday.

Oyinloye said there were indications that suspected cases of infection had been discovered in domestic animals like dogs. He said that although Kwara had been declared guinea worm free, detection of guinea worm infection in dogs and other domestic animals might complicate eradication of guinea worm in human population.

Oyinloye said the last reported case of guinea worm in the state was in 2004, stressing that since then the state had not reported any case of guinea worm infection.

The NTDs Coordinator, also a Deputy Director Public Health in the state Ministry of Health, said Nigeria was equally declared guinea worm free in 2013. He urged the public to watch out for likely cases as a result of new dimension of the disease in Chad, Mali, Ethopia, South-Sudan and the North-East of Nigeria.

Oyinloye decried the current security challenges in the North-East which had led to serious humanitarian crisis including likelihood of outbreak of new cases of guinea worm infection. According to him, the guinea worm eradication programme started in 1987 with certification that declared Nigeria guinea worm free in 2003 after 16 years of vigorous efforts of government, private sector and other corporate bodies before the certification was reaffirmed in 2013.

The coordinator said that eradication efforts might be jeopardised if infected domestic animals like dogs that roamed freely were not quarantined or separated from human quarters.

He said that sources of water that community used were often polluted by infected animals. Oyinloye said that existence of guinea worm in any biological species was an indication that the disease was likely to be in that environment.

This, he said, was because infected animals often shared the same water sources with man. Alcohol Treatment Alcoholism Treatment Eyeglasses Google Translate Hardes Holding Companies Human Population Infections .