Dracunculus medinensis or worms Guinea (Guinea worm) is a nematode that causes dracunculiasis, also known as guinea worm disease. This disease is caused by the guinea worm females in length can reach several meters, so that this worm is one of the longest nematodes infecting humans. On the contrary, the male guinea worm from only a few centimeters in length.
Guinea worm was initially small, very small. Early life started out as microscopic larvae that are small enough so that it will fit inside the body lice plain water. Water fleas like to hang out in a pond of stagnant (no flow).
When this water mite ingested by humans, any water fleas die because weren't quite equipped to survive in the harsh environment of the human stomach, leaving the larvae of the guinea worm larvae-which then penetrate the intestinal wall of the stomach or its host, and then enter into the abdominal cavity and retroperitoneal spaces. Once adult, which lasted about three months, mating occurs; the male worm dies after mating and absorbed, but the female worms alive is getting longer and longer.
About a year after the female guinea worm infection, no longer a microscopic, but size is 2-3 meters. The female worms that have been fertilized and then migrate to parts of the human foot and began to make their way to the surface of the skin to break out. The worm makes its way to the surface of the skin and makes the skin blisters, which causes a sense of burning. The worms do it deliberately, knowing that the feeling of burning makes people go into the water to relieve the sense of heat.
This is what the worms would like. It issued its head stretched out of the blisters, and releasing foul liquids, such as milk into water, containing hundreds of thousands more larvae. They are soon eaten by water fleas and this cycle over and over again ....
Humans infected with this worm when they drink water containing water fleas infected with the larvae of the guinea worm. Initially there are no symptoms of any kind.About a year later, the new guys feel a painful burning feeling while the female worm form blisters on the skin, usually in the lower extremities (legs). The worm then comes out of the skin for several weeks. During this time, the person may be difficult to walk or work. But this is a very rare disease that until the cause of death.
In 1986, there were an estimated 3.5 million cases of Guinea worm endemic in 20 countries in Asia and Africa. Ghana alone reportedly there 180,000 cases in 1989. The number of cases since then has been reduced more than 99.99% to 148 cases in 2013 – in the four remaining endemic countries of Africa: South Sudan, Chad, Mali and Ethiopia. This is the lowest number of Dracunculiasis eradication campaign since the beginning in the 1980s.