As you mentioned, the Carter Center has reduced the prevalence of Guinea worm by more than 99.7 percent since 1986. Within the next few years, Guinea worm will become only the second disease to be eradicated. What does this exciting accomplishment mean for future work on neglected diseases? What does it mean to you personally?
I think it’s proof that it can be done. The only other disease ever eradicated was smallpox, and that was 25 years ago. The Carter Center has the only organization in the world that analyzes all diseases to see which ones might possibly be eradicated completely. It’s the International Task Force for Disease Eradication. And we have about a dozen key agencies around the world who come and meet at the Carter Center. |
| We address and analyze every human illness to ascertain which ones, if treated properly, can be completely eradicated. That’s what we will prove with Guinea worm once it’s eradicated. |
“the successes are exemplified by the improved quality of life of those who have been suffering.” |
This will give more confidence to other people to join us in identifying and working together to eradicate diseases. We hope that also in the near future polio might be eradicated, and we’ve been helping with that to some degree. As you know they’ve had a setback in the polio eradication progress, and they’re trying to overcome the problems. But there are other diseases that we are analyzing now that might be susceptible to complete eradication in the future.
To go into an African village, say in Ghana, and you find two-thirds of the people in the village suffering from [Guinea worm] which incapacitates people, and knowing this disease has been eliminated in our own world, is an exciting experience. The disease forms enormous sores as it emerges from the body. It takes about 30 days for the worm to come out. Farmers can’t go to the fields; children can’t go to school. People can’t even walk quite often. They just drag themselves along the ground.
Then we’ve seen what causes a disease and how to prevent it. And if they do what we say, which most of them do, we go back a year later and there’s no more Guinea worm. They never will see a case of Guinea worm again, and in three or four years they forget about [it]. This is what we’ve done in more than 23,000 villages. |
president carter shaking hands with an ethiopian child. photo | robert grossman/tcc |
president carter shakes hands with a young boy in mosebo, ethiopia, in 2005. photo | john moores/tcc
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In just one year of Carter Center trachoma control activities in the 2000-member village of Mosebo, Ethiopia, 251 people have been treated for active trachoma, which causes blindness. Forty-one patients have received surgery to treat trichiasis, which can cause visual impairment and severe infections, and 367 households have built latrines to lessen infection risks.
The Carter Center provides the tools and means to help farmers in sub-saharan Africa increase their crop yields through agricultural development, sometimes two or even threefold. By increasing the amount of quality food produced, Third World hunger and poverty will be lessened, food security enhanced and national resources protected. |
Through your individual work as well as projects undertaken by the Carter Center, you have become a great figurehead of strength and support for issues of peace, health and human rights. As such, whom do you admire within the humanitarian realm?
We work with a lot of people. I would say one of the more generic admirations I have is for all the volunteers who join Habitat for Humanity. We sometimes have as many as 10,000 volunteers that join Rosalynn and me in the annual Jimmy Carter Work Project. It’s where we go into a community or country and build a large number of Habitat for Humanity homes for poor people in need over a five-year period. To see the dedication of these volunteers who pay their own way, for instance, from [the US] to the Philippines, South Korea, Mexico or to South Africa [sic]. This year they’re going to join Rosalynn and me in October in India. They provide their own tools, they dedicate a full week or 10 days of their lives and they work side-by-side with families who have never had a decent home but who join in the work and will own their own house. This is the kind of dedication that’s just one example of the hundreds of different ways that folks around the world volunteer to help their neighbors.
From a distance, there would be a person like Mother Theresa, whom I was lucky enough to meet before she passed away. I think what makes her contribution so notable is the fact that she did it in almost total obscurity, without any self-promoting publicity. Obviously, there are tens of thousands of people like that around the world who are devoted to humanitarian causes but are never recognized in any way. I’ve been recognized for the few things I’ve done because I used to be President of the United States, and I have the image and fame that comes from that exalted position.
I think that the ones that I admire most are the ones that Mother Theresa exemplifies. The Habitat volunteers I just mentioned to you that go year after year or day after day under sometimes the most difficult and private circumstances, and devote their lives or a portion of their lives to helping other people.
The point is that if you’re a lawyer, a teacher, a reporter, an editor, a farmer or a builder, obviously your primary duty is to pursue your own profession and to earn a living and take care of your family; that’s part of your responsibility. But all of us, including all of those I just mentioned, [and] many others, have an opportunity and an obligation, maybe a duty, to take a portion of our good fortune and invest it in helping others. This is a chance to have a much more exciting, challenging, adventurous, unpredictable and gratifying life. And when we embark on projects that encompass people whom we would otherwise not ever know, the result is always a greater benefit to us than we anticipate, and the benefits always exceed whatever sacrifice of finances, time or effort we invest. |
president and mrs. carter observing election day in liberia in october 2005. the two were present during the election process as part of a larger carter center/national democratic institute delegation. photo | deborah hakes/tcc |
“All of us ... have an
opportunity and an
obligation, maybe a duty,
to take a portion of our
good fortune and invest
it in helping others.” |
The Carter Center
One Copenhill
453 Freedom Parkway
Atlanta, GA 30307 USA
404.420.5100
carterweb@emory.edu
www.cartercenter.org
Habitat for Humanity International
Jimmy Carter Work Project
121 Habitat Street
Americus, GA 31709-3498 USA
229. 924.6935, ext. 2551 or 2552
publicinfo@habitat.org
www.habitat.org |
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