When looking at pinworm growth, you’ll notice that pinworms have an affect on a much larger percentage of our population than people realize.
In 2008, it is estimated that there were about 40 million cases of pinworms in North America alone. The population in North America in 2008 was 528,720,588. Based on these calculations, that means that about 7.5% of the population in North America was diagnosed with pinworm infections. What’s scarier is that the expected pinworm growth is not a pretty thing.
Estimations and Math on Pinworm Growth
I calculated some information that will show the cases of pinworms as we move into the future. Keep in mind that these are estimates based on what the expected world population will be in the coming years against a 7.5% infection rate:
Expected Pinworm Cases in 2020
It is expected that there will be approximately 571,864,188 people living in North America in the year 2020. At a 7.50% infection rate, we’re looking at almost 42,889,814 pinworm cases.
Expected Cases in 2030
Let’s move forward another decade, and we have a guestimated pinworm growth of 618,828,306 people living in North America. using the same percentage of infections, we would assume that there are 46,412,123 pinworm cases in 2030.
Expected Cases in 2040
In 2040, we will probably have a population in North America somewhere around 662,567,521. This equates to 49,692,564 pinworm cases.
Expected Cases in 2050
Finally, by 2050, we can expect to have about 52,718,841 cases of pinworms in North America, based on a population of about 702,917,883. That’s over 50 million cases of pinworms by the year 2050. That’s a lot of pinworms!
The Bad News About Pinworms
Not to be negative, but I have to throw in one more piece of information. These are numbers that are only based on the known cases in North America. Some estimates assume that the total percentage of people with pinworms in North America are as high as 30%. That’s almost a third of the population in North America and the majority don’t even know that they have them. As a great example to this, read our article about how this pinworm site made a difference.
Based on this number, that means that a potential 210 million people will have pinworms by the year 2050. I don’t even know what to say to this number.
So what can we do about it? Build awareness. We need to encourage our children to tell us when something doesn’t seem right. Learn about pinworm symptoms so that you know what to look for. My hope is that by building awareness, we can stop the pinworm growth in the world.
