Musah Issahaku sits with a bandage on his right leg which hides the tip of a white worm up to one metre (3.3 feet) long wrapped deep under his flesh.
One worm has already been removed from the 12-year-old’s other leg and each day care workers extract an inch of the spaghetti-like creature, a process that can take up to two months.
Guinea worm, also known as the fiery serpent, is contracted by drinking contaminated water.
Once in the abdomen, worm larvae grow for around a year before emerging through an agonising blister on the skin. Global efforts to eradicate the disease have seen the number of cases fall from an estimated 3.5 million in 1986 to 10,674 reported cases last year, according to the Carter Center, a human rights group set up by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
It is now endemic in just nine countries, all of them in Africa: Sudan, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.