Côte d'Ivoire in 1993; Sudan, Kenya, Chad, and Ethiopia in 1994; Yemen and the Central African Republic in 1995. Each national eradication program had three phases. The first phase consisted of a nationwide search to identify the extent of dracunculiasis transmission and develop national and regional plans of action. The second phase involved the training and distribution of staff and volunteers to provide public education village-by-village, surveil for cases, and deliver water filters. This continued and evolved as needed until the national burden of disease was very low. Then in a third phase, programs intensified surveillance efforts with the goal of identifying each case within 24 hours of the worm emerging and preventing the person from contaminating drinking water supplies. Most national programs offered voluntary in-patient centers, where those affected could stay and receive food and care until their worms were removed. In May 1991, the 44th World Health Assembly called for an international certification system to verify dracunculiasis eradication country-by-country. To this end, in 1995 the WHO established the International Commission for the Certification of Dracunculiasis Eradication (ICCDE). Once a country reports zero cases of dracunculiasis for a calendar year, the ICCDE considers that country to have interrupted guinea worm transmission, and is then in the "precertification phase". If the country repeats this feat with zero cases in each of the next three calendar years, the ICCDE sends a team to the country to assess the country's disease surveillance systems and to verify the country's reports. The ICCDE can then formally recommend the WHO Director-General certify a country as free of dracunculiasis. Since the initiation of the global eradication program, the ICCDE has certified 15 of the original endemic countries as having eradicated dracunculiasis: Pakistan in 1997; India in 2000; Senegal and Yemen in 2004; the Central African Republic and Cameroon in 2007; Benin, Mauritania, and Uganda in 2009; Burkina Faso and Togo in 2011; Côte d'Ivoire, Niger, and Nigeria in 2013; and Ghana in 2015. Other animals In addition to humans, D. medinensis can infect dogs. Infections of domestic dogs have been particularly common in Chad, where they helped reignite dracunculiasis transmission in 2010. Dogs are thought to be infected by eating a paratenic host, likely a fish or amphibian. As with humans, prevention efforts have focused on preventing infection by encouraging people in affected areas to bury fish entrails as well as to identify and tie up