Jimmy Carter may be the former president of the United States and a champion philanthropist, but in a recent visit to the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) he was introduced via a guinea worm floating in a glass jar.
“This is the first time that I’ve been introduced as the embalmer of the guinea worm,” Carter joked.
He is very familiar with the worm, having spent the past 20 years fighting diseases found in remote areas of Africa and Latin American, such as the guinea worm, river blindness and schistosomiasis.
Carter promoted the activities of the Carter Center, established in 1982, before an overflow audience at the La Jolla Playhouse on Friday, June 23. The Atlanta-based organization seeks to eliminate treatable diseases in the most impoverished villages in the world, promote fair elections, broker peace between volatile leaders and combat the stigma of mental illness through education.
As speaker John Moores held the critter before the crowd, he praised Carter for “making more of a difference in the world than anyone I know.” Moores chairs the center’s board of trustees, as well as the San Diego Padres and is a member of the University of California (UC) Regents, the board that governs the UC system.
When Carter began his war on guinea worm in 1982, an estimated 3.5 million people were infected; today only approximately 10,000 people carry the disease.
A highly preventable infection, villagers contract guinea worms from drinking stagnant water infested with guinea worm larvae. As the larvae mature in the body, it can grow as long as 3 feet until the skinny worm emerges slowly through a painful blister in the skin.
Carter recalls visiting one village in Ghana where he was struck by a beautiful woman carrying what appeared to be a baby. Carter later realized that she was in fact carrying her right breast that was infected with a guinea worm breaking through her nipple. Eleven guinea worms infected her body.
In response, Carter teamed with the science giant DuPont to invent a drinking pipe with a thick filter so that rural dwellers could continue to draw water straight from the local pond or well while filtering out the larvae and preventing the disease. Carter highlighted the importance of using simple technology that adapts to the lifestyle of the people in need.
Carter’s methodology for reaching the world’s poor is atypical of most nonprofits. Instead of taking time to establish a base of personnel, supplies, infrastructure and contacts in a developing area, Carter simply calls the country’s president. A partnership is then formed with the heads of the departments of health, agriculture, transportation and housing.
A phalanx of foreigners is not dispatched to the area of need. Rather, the center trains one native to spread the knowledge or techniques on sanitation, health and prevention to other villages. The messenger even has to buy his own bike.
And the Carter Center doesn’t put its name all over the projects. It’s the natives who do the work and the natives who deserve the credit, Carter said.
The Carter Center campus also works to replicate the success of the Camp David Accords, in which Carter mediated a peace treaty between the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem in 1979. Carter invites international leaders on the brink of war to the isolated, tranquil campus in hopes of facilitating a peace treaty.
Another mission of the center is to oversee foreign elections in fragile democratic regimes. The nonprofit recently monitored its 52nd election in Palestine. The center only agrees to the expensive and timely task if both parties are willing and trusting of the Carter team.
Carter described the years after the White House as the best of his life. He compared his knowledge of Africa during his presidency, a continent he knew little about and had only visited twice, with his current relationship to the continent. During his years of expeditions, Carter said he was astonished to realize that the most impoverished people were as intelligent, ambitious, hardworking and family-centered as his own family.
The experience also stretched Carter’s grasp of human rights, which he said extend foremost to decent shelter, education and healthcare.
“The rights that Americans cherish ” freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion, trial by jury ” those things aren’t important when your children are starving,” Carter said.
In 2002, Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts “to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”
For more information about the Carter Center, call (404) 420-5100 or visit www.cartercenter.org.