As world leaders mourn the death of former President Jimmy Carter and discuss his political and political legacy, doctors are remembering his efforts to prevent disease and promote global public health.
The 39th president spent five decades working to eradicate a parasitic disease, helped organize a massive drug delivery program and made strides in tackling America’s mental health crisis.
Dr. Julie Jacobson, now managing partner of the nonprofit Bridges to Development, helped provide funding for the Carter Center’s work in America, Nigeria, and Ethiopia while working for Bill. & Melinda Gates Foundation for more than a decade.
“He had a huge impact, I think most of the world doesn’t appreciate that they exist specifically because of diseases,” Jacobson told ABC News about Jimmy Carter’s work. “He was a real champion of neglected tropical diseases, which are some of the most common infections of people living with the least resources. And he found these diseases and then he really wanted to do something about it, and he used his voice, his voice. His influence, his passion, really interested others. it was not their place to continue.”
Virtually eradicate guinea worm disease
After losing the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan, Carter founded the Carter Center in 1982, a nonprofit organization that seeks to “prevent and resolve conflict, enhance freedom and democracy, and improve health,” according to the Center’s website.
Among the organization’s many efforts, the Carter Center helped lead a successful international campaign to eradicate dracunculosis, also known as Guinea worm disease, a parasitic infection caused by consuming contaminated drinking water.
Water in ponds or other stagnant bodies of water may contain small crustaceans known as water fleas, which can be infested with Guinea worm larvae. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Former President Jimmy Carter attends an interview with Reuters in Cairo, Egypt, January 12, 2012.
Amr Dalsh/Reuters
About a year after infecting a human host, the guinea worm forms a blister on the skin and emerges from it, which can cause burning pain, fever and swelling, according to the CDC and other agencies. World Health Organization.
“No one else wanted to take it,” Jimmy Carter told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. 2015 interview on “Good Morning America.”. “So I decided to take it on.”
In 1986, Guinea worm disease affected 3.5 million people annually in 21 countries in Africa and Asia. Since then, the incidence of the disease has been reduced by 99.99%, to a “provisional” 14 human cases in 2023. According to the Carter Center.
Jacobson said the success is even more remarkable because there is no vaccine to prevent Guinea worm disease and no drug to treat it. Guinea worm disease tracking, according to Jacobson, involves following possible cases for a year to determine whether they are infected, checking if infected humans have an infected water source near them, and monitoring the entire community.
“To think that you could eradicate a disease without any tools is still just a crazy idea, but he did it with determination, and he worked with the grassroots people in the communities and formed teams to work with the people in those communities and empower the communities,” Jacobson said.
The Carter Center says that if the effort is successful, Guinea worm disease could become the second human disease in history to be completely eradicated, after smallpox, and the first to do so without the use of vaccines or drugs.
Carter told ABC News in a 2015 interview that his goal was to completely eradicate the disease: “I think it will be a great achievement, not for me, but for the people affected and for the whole world to see the disease eradicated like this.”
Mass distribution of anti-blindness drugs in rivers
The Carter Center also works against other preventable diseases, including schistosomiasis and lymphatic filariasis – known as snail fever and elephantiasis, respectively – and trachoma, which is one of the leading causes of preventable blindness. It is also working with the governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic to eliminate lymphatic filariasis and malaria from the island of Hispaniola, which the two countries share and is “the last reservoir in the Caribbean for both diseases.” According to the Carter Center.
Carter and his organization were also involved in helping to organize a major drug delivery program, also known as river blindness, to help eradicate onchocerciasis, which is transmitted through the repeated bites of infected black flies. According to the CDC.
Merck pharmaceutical company & Co. were conducting field studies in Africa, and the drug ivermectin was shown to be effective in treating river blindness in humans. The Carter Center In collaboration with Merck for mass distribution of ivermectin, brand name Mectizan, “as long as it takes” in Africa and Latin America. To date, the Carter Center has helped distribute more than 500 million treatments of Mectizan, according to Merck.
Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter gets a hug from his wife Rosalynn after the third presidential debate on October 22, 1976 in Williamsburg, Va.
AP
In 1995, Carter negotiated a two-month ceasefire in Sudan, allowing health workers there to eradicate Guinea worm disease, prevent river blindness and vaccinate children against polio.
“Once we know the solutions, it’s ethical to make sure they’re available to the people who need them most,” Dr. Usha Ramakrishnan, chair of the Department of Global Health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, told ABC News. . “And we were there with river blindness. There was a treatment, but improving access to medication, making it affordable, getting it to people who need it was very much in line with the work (Carter Center) was doing.”
Addressing mental health
Carter also committed to addressing mental health issues. He created it during his presidency Presidential Commission on Mental Healthwhich recommended a national plan for the care of people with chronic mental illness.
Although the Reagan administration never adopted it as policy, the plan’s recommended strategies were adopted by some mental health advocacy groups “for profit in the 1980s,” he says. an exam.
Carter also signed the bill Mental Health Systems Act of 1980which provided funding to community mental health centers.
After his presidency, Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter continued to work to improve access to mental health.
Ramakrishnan said Carter’s work helped reduce some of the stigma associated with mental health.
“There’s still a lot of stigma, but they really brought it out in the conversation and incorporated mental health as an important aspect of health and wellness,” Ramakrishnan said. “There are still many challenges, and there are many capable mentors and trained people who are carrying this mantle forward.”
