How many Nobel Prizes does Reagan have?
-0-
How many diseases did Reagan eliminate from Asia?
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Carter
Earned two Nobel Peace Prizes and received one.
Eliminated Guinea worm from Asia and has nearly done so from Africa.
Our Goal
Since 1986, The Carter Center has led the international campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease, working closely with ministries of health and local communities, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and many others.
Guinea worm disease is set to become the second human disease in history, after smallpox, to be eradicated. It will be the first parasitic disease to be eradicated and the first disease to be eradicated without the use of a vaccine or medicine.
What is Guinea worm disease?
Considered a neglected tropical disease, Guinea worm disease (dracunculiasis) is a parasitic infection caused by the nematode roundworm parasite Dracunculus medenisis. It is contracted when people consume water from stagnant sources contaminated with Guinea worm larvae. Inside a human's abdomen, Guinea worm larvae mate and female worms mature and grow. After about a year of incubation, the female Guinea worm, 1 meter long, creates an agonizingly painful lesion on the skin and slowly emerges from the body. Guinea worm sufferers may try to seek relief from the burning sensation caused by the emerging worm and immerse their limbs in water sources, but this contact with water stimulates the emerging worm to release its larvae into the water and begin the cycle of infection all over again.
Guinea worm is a particularly devastating disease that incapacitates people for extended periods of time, making them unable to care for themselves, work, grow food for their families, or attend school.
How widespread is the problem?
In 1986, the disease afflicted an estimated 3.5 million people a year in 21 countries in Africa and Asia. Today, thanks to the work of The Carter Center and its partners — including the countries themselves — the incidence of Guinea worm has been reduced by more than 99.99 percent to 126 cases in 2014.
The Carter Center works to eradicate Guinea worm disease in four remaining endemic countries: South Sudan, Mali, Chad, and Ethiopia.
Our Strategy
There is no known curative medicine or vaccine to prevent Guinea worm disease — the same treatment for emerging worms has been used for thousands of years.
Traditional removal of a Guinea worm consists of winding the worm around a piece of gauze or small stick and manually extracting it — a slow, painful process that often takes weeks. The skin lesions often develop secondary bacterial infections, which exacerbate the suffering and prolong the period of disability.
The Center's strategy is to work with ministries of health to stop the spread of Guinea worm disease by providing health education and helping to maintain political will.
The Guinea Worm Eradication Program is wiping out this ancient disease mainly through community-based interventions to educate and change behavior, such as teaching people to filter all drinking water and preventing transmission by keeping anyone with an emerging worm from entering water sources.
For the eradication campaign to continue successfully, enormous dedication and attention to detail is critical for all field supervisors and the thousands of community-based volunteers charged with executing the campaign.
Results and Impact
Incidences of Guinea worm disease have been reduced from an estimated 3.5 million in 1986 to 126 in 2014.
The Guinea worm eradication campaign has averted at least 80 million cases of this devastating disease among the world's poorest and most neglected people.
The campaign has helped to establish village-based health delivery systems in thousands of communities that now have networks of health personnel and volunteers who provide health education and interventions to prevent other diseases.
Results and Impact
To date, the Center with its partners has:
Distributed more than 200 million treatments of Mectizan® in Africa and Latin America.
Interrupted transmission of river blindness in 11 foci of the 13 endemic areas in the Americas through health education and Mectizan distribution. In 2013, Colombia became the first country in the Americas to eliminate river blindness and the first country in the world to be granted verification of elimination of river blindness by the World Health Organization. Ecuador and Mexico followed in Colombia's steps, receiving official verification of elimination in 2014 and 2015, respectively.
Demonstrated that river blindness elimination is possible in regions of Africa, where it was long thought to be too prevalent to tackle.
Stopped river blindness transmission from 15 of the original 17 foci in Uganda, enabling 2.7 million Ugandans to be free from the scourge.
Stopped river blindness transmission in Abu Hamad, Sudan, the most isolated focus area in the world, with more than 100,000 no longer at risk of the disease.
Carter isn't bitter because he has no reason to be bitter. He left the world far better than it was before and has done more than all Republican presidents combined since Lincoln to make the world a better place. There is no president with a record even a fraction as important and world-changing since FDR. He is too successful and admired to be bitter about anything.
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