Ghana must do more to raise public awareness and ensure a sense of urgency for completely ending the social injustice of guinea worm, "an unnecessary and preventable disease," says former US President, Jimmy Carter. Addressing a news conference on Thursday, Mr Carter said Ghana, the country that inspired him 20 years ago to lead an international coalition to eradicate the guinea worm disease, has the wealth and the ability to eradicate the disease, and is therefore not different from other countries that have successfully done it. Mr Carter, founder and president of the Carter Centre, a non-for-profit non-governmental organisation set up in 1982 to advance peace and health worldwide, had earlier travelled to Savelugu in the North with international and national health experts to assess the country’s efforts to eliminate the disease. Ghana remains the most guinea worm-endemic country in West Africa with 4,132 cases in 2006, an increase of four per cent from the 3,981 cases reported in 2005 and second in the world after war-torn Sudan currently with 20,300 reported cases. While the country swiftly reduced guinea worm cases after the start of the programme in 1987, surges in cases in the mid and late 1990s left Ghana ranking as the highest endemic country in the world in 2004, surpassing even Sudan which had been fighting a civil war for more than 20 years. Mr Carter stressed the need for more commitment of health officials and staff at all levels to keep people with guinea worm disease from contaminating sources of drinking water. He said in spite of the conflict in that country, Sudan was making progress in fighting the epidemic and lamented that Ghana, instead of moving forward in the fight was rather going backwards. Providing statistics of other African countries, Mr Carter said Mali currently has 329 reported cases; Niger, 110; Nigeria, 16; Cote d’Ivoire, five, Burkina Faso, five, adding that Benin, Uganda, Chad and Mauritania now have no cases. He noted that one reason for Ghana’s lack of progress in fighting the epidemic might be due to the government’s concentration on digging deep wells but added that that was not enough and stressed the need for an increase in the application of bait to kill the worm larvae and 100 per cent containment to identify and treat those infected and to keep them from water sources. Times