Jimmy Carter targeted diseases primarily affecting the poor in remote areas — notably 'Guinea worm disease.' That commitment led cases to plummet from 3.6 million a year to just 13 in 2022.
On a 2007 visit to Savelugu Hospital in Ghana, President Jimmy Carter asks a group of children if they've had Guinea worm. A raised hand is a yes.On a 2007 visit to Savelugu Hospital in Ghana, President Jimmy Carter asks a group of children if they've had Guinea worm. A raised hand is a yes.during his term as president.
The effort to end this disease did not rely on high-tech methods. Kelly Callahan, a public health worker who spent years fighting Guinea worm disease in southern Sudan with the Carter Center, says:"Guinea worm disease has no cure, no vaccination, basically the entire eradication effort is built on behavior change."
As a result, in 2019 the World Health Organization pushed back its expected eradication date for the disease a full decade from 2020 to 2030. "The main reason he [Borne] came to the Carter Center was because he couldn't get anyone else to tackle this problem," Carter recalled."It's a despicable disease. And it was in such remote villages that no one wanted to take on the task. So we decided to take it on." That was in 1986.
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