Apr 25 2012
The Globe and Mail profiles former President Jimmy Carter and the Carter Center's decades-long efforts to eradicate guinea worm disease, also known as dracunculiasis. According to the newspaper, "In 2011, there were 1,060 cases of guinea worm disease identified in the world, in four countries," and "[s]taff and volunteers from the Carter Center have visited every one of the 26,500 villages where guinea worm was identified" to provide education on prevention, as well as treatment. "Mr. Carter is hands-on, visiting these countries and affected villages himself," and "[h]is approach is to negotiate directly with kings, presidents and rebel leaders, to get them to sign contracts" to focus on the disease's eradication, the Global and Mail writes, concluding, "It is perhaps the ultimate irony that, in making the forgotten disease of forgotten people his cause, Mr. Carter's contribution has been largely forgotten" (Picard, 4/23).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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