![]() “I thought that he isn’t going to want to use up any political credit.” ![]() “We decided that the Guinea worm was so obscure that no one in the U.S. Prevention could be achieved by showing villagers how to make their water supply safe - filtering drinking water and preventing the infected from walking into stagnant ponds and spreading larvae - coupled with vigilant monitoring of the disease.īut there was a problem: Guinea worm disease did not exist in the United States. As smallpox was on the verge of being eliminated in 1977, Carter asked Bourne if there was any other disease that could have the same impact.īourne told Carter that the Guinea worm would probably be the easiest global infectious disease to eradicate: Unlike smallpox, it could be eliminated without a medicine or vaccine. Nearly a year and a half later, Carter went back to Denchira to find the parasite almost gone.Ĭarter first considered the possibility of eradicating Guinea worm when he was in the White House. Hopkins, who led the center’s efforts to eradicate the disease from 1987 to 2015. The Carter Center worked with the Ministry of Health to bring every known intervention to the village, said Dr. “Well, we can’t leave them like this,” Carter said after his visit to Denchira. “Her right breast, which was about more than a foot long … had a Guinea worm emerging from the nipple,” Carter said in 2016. Carter spotted a young woman he thought was cradling a baby in the crook of her right arm, but when he approached, he realized she was not holding an infant. About half the village’s 500 inhabitants were infected, some so crippled that they could not leave their huts. In 1988, Carter encountered the Guinea worm for the first time in the village of Denchira near Accra, the Ghanian capital. Then the stick is twisted to slowly pull out the worm, about an inch a day. ![]() First, the worm is wrapped onto a rolled piece of gauze or stick. Ridding the body of the parasite takes weeks. The worm’s exit is so agonizing that it prevent kids from going to school and adults from farming, cooking and collecting firewood. For the millions of people who didn’t get the Guinea worm infection, he has had an enormous impact.” Peter Bourne, Carter’s former drug czar who became an assistant secretary-general at the United Nations. “We’ve joked many times: Who’s going to win - the Guinea worm or Jimmy Carter?” said Dr. The 98-year-old, now in hospice at home in Plains, Ga., is on the cusp of reaching his goal: The number of reported human cases dwindled in 2022 to 13 - an all-time low. “We know where all of them are, so obviously that would be my top priority.”Ĭarter had set up the global Guinea Worm Eradication Program in 1986, when about 3.5 million people across rural Africa and Asia were afflicted by the excruciating parasite that has plagued humans for thousands of years. “I’d like the last Guinea worm to die before I do,” the 39th president told reporters at the Carter Center. Just a few hours before President Carter underwent his first radiation treatment for brain cancer, he spoke of his hope, in the time he had left, to purge the world of a parasitic worm disease.
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