Foul Water/Fiery Serpent is a new documentary feature film that follows dedicated health workers engaged in a final battle to eradicate a horrific disease in Africa. For thousands of years the Guinea worm parasite (Dracunculus medinensis) has caused disabling misery, infecting people who drink water contaminated with the worm's larvae. After growing inside the victim for a year, the adult worm, up to three feet long, emerges from the body through an agonizing skin blister that can incapacitate and cripple. For nearly three years, Foul Water/Fiery Serpent tracks determined teams of men and women as they fight the closing skirmishes to wipe out the last Guinea worms in Ghana and Sudan. Attacking the parasites where they thrive - in poor, remote villages that rely on contaminated water - they distribute filter cloths, treat water sources with safe pesticide, educate villagers about avoiding the worms, and treat victims suffering from the disease. Through a relentless cycle of successes and failures, facing ignorance and superstition in a vast landscape ravaged by war, the heroes in this story are making medical history in an epic struggle to drive an ancient enemy into extinction. Following the victory against smallpox, Guinea worm is likely to be the next disease in the history of mankind to be eradicated from the Earth.
