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Reported cases of guinea worm disease

WHO
See all data and research on:
Global HealthNeglected Tropical DiseasesEradication of Diseases

What you should know about this indicator

A case of guinea-worm disease is a person exhibiting a skin lesion with emergence of a Guinea worm, and in which the worm is confirmed in laboratory tests to be D. medinensis. That person is counted as a case only once during the calendar year, i.e. when the first worm emerges from that person.

Reported cases of guinea worm disease
WHO
Reported cases of guinea worm disease (Dracunculiasis) as recorded by the WHO.
Source
World Health Organization (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
June 17, 2024
Next expected update
June 2025
Date range
1980–2023
Unit
cases
Links
https://web.archive.org/web/20211024081702/https://apps.who.int/dracunculiasis/dradata/html/report_Countries_t0.html
https://www.who.int/teams/control-of-neglected-tropical-diseases/dracunculiasis/dracunculiasis-eradication-portal

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Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

World Health Organization

Data published by

World Health Organization; Dracunculiasis Eradication Portal, World Health Organization

Retrieved on
June 29, 2023
Retrieved from
https://web.archive.org/web/20211024081702/https://apps.who.int/dracunculiasis/dradata/html/report_Countries_t0.html
https://www.who.int/teams/control-of-neglected-tropical-diseases/dracunculiasis/dracunculiasis-eradication-portal
Retrieved on
June 17, 2024
Retrieved from
https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/who-wer-9920-249-269
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Weekly Epidemic Report No 20, 2024, 99, 249–269, World Health Organization

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator

For Cameroon, Central African Republic, Cote d'Ivoire, Mauritania, Senegal and Yemen the data is from: 1986-2017: https://web.archive.org/web/20220208133814/https://apps.who.int/dracunculiasis/dradata/html/report_Countries_i2.html 2018: Table 1a: https://web.archive.org/web/20230629130727/https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/324786/WER9420-233-251.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y 2019: Table 1a: https://web.archive.org/web/20230629130619/https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/332086/WER9520-209-227-eng-fre.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y 2020: Table 1a: https://web.archive.org/web/20230226162934/https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/341529/WER9621-173-194-eng-fre.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y 2021: Table 1a: https://web.archive.org/web/20230226163027/https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/354576/WER9721-22-225-247-eng-fre.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y 2022: Table 1a: https://web.archive.org/web/20230629124651/https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/367924/WER9820-205-224.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y For all other countries we gathered data from the following sources: 1980-2020: https://www.who.int/teams/control-of-neglected-tropical-diseases/dracunculiasis/dracunculiasis-eradication-portal 2021: Table 1a: https://web.archive.org/web/20230226163027/https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/354576/WER9721-22-225-247-eng-fre.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y 2022: Table 1a: https://web.archive.org/web/20230629124651/https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/367924/WER9820-205-224.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y 2023: Table 1a: https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/376790/WER9920-249-269.pdf?sequence=1 We calculate global totals as the sum of the number of reported cases in each country.

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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Reported cases of guinea worm disease”, part of the following publication: Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser (2016) - “Global Health”. Data adapted from World Health Organization. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-reported-guinea-worm-dracunculiasis-cases [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

World Health Organization (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

World Health Organization (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Reported cases of guinea worm disease – WHO” [dataset]. World Health Organization, “Dracunculiasis eradication: global surveillance summary 2023” [original data]. Retrieved July 26, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-reported-guinea-worm-dracunculiasis-cases