Guinea Worm May Be eliminated Before Polio

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Matt Ridley, When Species Extermination Is a Good Thing; Guinea worm will probably beat polio to the finish line of extinction. Wall Street Journal, Feb 10, 2013
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 83891611698494.html
("The handful of [2012] cases in Chad (10), Mali (7) and Ethiopia (4) are expected to dwindle to nothing this year, but there were 521 cases in South Sudan (mostly in just one county)")

Note:
(a)For Guinea worm, see Dracunculus (animal)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracunculus_(animal)
(a genus of nematodes; The worms can reach a metre in length; The best known species is D. medinensis, known commonly as the Guinea worm; "D medinensis" requires a human host to reproduce. Thus the elimination of human infection will lead to [its] extinction")
(b) Lymphatic filariasis (also known as elphantiasis) is casued mainly (90%) by Wuchereria bancrofti (a nematode).

* Life Cycle of Wuchereria bancrofti, in Filarisis. CDC, undated.
http://www.dpd.cdc.gov/dpdx/HTML ... sis_w_bancrofti.htm
("The female worms measure 80 to 100 mm in length and 0.24 to 0.30 mm in diameter, while the males measure about 40 mm by .1 mm")
(c) Onchocerciasis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onchocerciasis
(Onchocerciasis is second in the world only to trachoma as an infectious cause of blindness; The vast majority of infections occur in sub-Saharan Africa)
, or river blindness, is caused by Onchocerca volvulus (also a nematode).
(d) yaws
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaws