Jimmy Carter is in the United Kingdom this week drumming up further support for his Atlanta-based nonprofit’s efforts to wipe out tropical diseases.
The former U.S. president gave a nearly half-hour speech to the House of Lords in London, held in the ornate Robing Room, to gather momentum for the final push to eradicate Guinea worm, one of the neglected tropical diseases the Carter Center has had in its crosshairs since 1986.
He gave a lecture titled “Final Days of the Fiery Serpent: Guinea Worm Eradication” as part of a House of Lords series featuring international figures.
“It will be fascinating to hear President Carter’s experiences of taking on, and now being close to winning, the fight against an ancient disease,” Lord Speaker Baroness D’Souza said in announcement in advance of the speech. She also introduced him at the event.
Mr. Carter spoke of the early days of Guinea worm work, where volunteers had to use cartoons to communicate in an environment of linguistic diversity and low literacy. One major lesson was that while the strategy could come from the outside, collaboration with communities was a necessity, he said in the speech:
First, we build trust, I might say, in us among the affected people by approaching them with complete respect and recognizing their independence and freedom and their knowledge of their own community is much greater than our knowledge of their communities. We don’t impose our ideas on them but help them solve their own problems, and Guinea worm obviously is recognized by them as a serious problem.
The center in January announced that there were just 22 cases left in four African countries at the end of the 2015, a reduction of 83 percent from the previous year. With just five cases remaining, South Sudan looks like it’s on pace to eliminate the disease this year. Other cases remain in Ethiopia, Chad and Mali — all now in the single digits — but the effort to stamp them out is facing new challenges including conflict in Mali and South Sudan and the emergence of the Guinea worm parasite in dogs in Chad.
The United Kingdom has been a major donor to the Carter Center for years, its Department for International Development contributing substantially to the Guinea worm campaign and other initiatives. The government has given £30 million (about $43.4 million) since 2009 and just announced a £4.5 million (about $6.5 million) contribution to help finish the job.
Jeremy Pilmore-Bedford, the U.K. consul general for the Southeast, was in attendance at the speech during his trip to London. He said the U.K. aid budget is second in the world, trailing only that of the U.S., and that his country shares the Carter Center’s passion for promoting global health and conquering tropical diseases.
“The event was packed. Attendees included members of both the House of Lords and House of Commons, the U.K. medical experts on tropical medicine (including a U.K. expert from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the world’s oldest school for this study, who advises the Carter Center) and other guests of the Carter Center,” Mr. Pilmore-Bedford told Global Atlanta by email. “I saw the shadow foreign secretary, Hilary Benn; the leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, Lord Steel (former Liberal Democrat leader) and Andrew Mitchel (former Development Secretary).”
Mr. Carter fielded questions from the legislators after the speech, including on the U.S. elections, which he later said allowed “legal bribery” to take root though the current campaign finance system.
The consul general said Mr. Carter also met with Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, and Nick Hurd, minister of the international development department, whose employees also were able to hear a speech from Mr. Carter, some by video conference from Asia and Africa.
The Department for International Development’s new contribution will help pay for not only health volunteers, water filters and larvicide in few remaining villages where the worm is present, but also for campaigns to monitor 6,000 villages and educate people in the last four countries to make sure the disease doesn’t make a comeback.
Mr. Hurd pointed out the need to finish off the incurable parasite, which enters the body through contaminated water and exits painfully by being pulled out through the skin:
Guinea worm is a truly horrendous disease, causing unimaginable pain and suffering. The fact that we are now so close to eradicating it is one of the great public health success stories of modern times. The tremendous progress we have made in tackling this disease would not have been possible without the personal commitment of Jimmy Carter and his Carter Center. UK aid has played a key role supporting their efforts, but it’s clear that without continued backing there is a real risk of a resurgence in the disease.
An estimated 3.5 million cases were present when the work began in 1986, but Mr. Carter estimates the education campaigns backed by the center have prevented 80 million cases.
Busy fighting for others, the former president has also had his own battle with disease to think about. The 91-year-old announced last June that he was suffering from liver cancer that had spread to his brain, but after undergoing radiation treatments, a brain scan in November found no cancer. He reportedly said during the London trip that a recent scan of his abdomen also showed no cancer. He has another treatment slated for Feb. 9. He said he hopes he can “outlive the last Guinea worm.”
The Carter Center regularly monitors diseases that its leaders believe should be targeted for eradication from a country or the world through its International Task Force for Disease Eradication.
Listen to Mr. Carter’s audio interview with the BBC here.
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