Matt Kempner | The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (TNS)
ATLANTA — Nearly a decade ago, Jimmy Carter said he hoped to outlive a parasitic worm once responsible for inflicting pain on millions of people around the world every year.
At the time, as the former U.S. president successfully battled cancer, Guinea worm disease had nearly been wiped out thanks in large part to the efforts of the Carter Center, the Atlanta-based nonprofit he founded with his wife, Rosalynn.
But the worms have stubbornly resisted extinction.
And the chances of Carter outliving them may be fading. He turned 100 years old on Tuesday and has been in home hospice for the last 19 months.
A small number of Guinea worm disease cases continue to be reported each year in humans. There needs to be no cases for three years in a row for the disease to be determined to be eradicated.
When might that happen?
“We are aiming for as soon as possible,” said Paige Alexander, the chief executive officer of the Carter Center. “I would imagine 2030 is a good aim for us.”
“If we win,” she added, it would be only the second disease considered eradicated from the planet after smallpox.
When the Carter Center recently held a big birthday concert in Atlanta in honor of the former president, Alexander was instead in the African nation of Chad, visiting with health officials from various countries to talk about Guinea worm elimination. “I was exactly where President Carter wanted me, which was in the field.”
She traveled with Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, and the two sent a selfie to Carter in Plains. “I was told he smiled,” Alexander said.
Worldwide last year there were only 14 recorded human cases of Guinea worm disease, according to the Carter Center. When the nonprofit began its eradication effort in 1986, there were an estimated 3.5 million cases in nearly two dozen African and Asian nations.
The 99.999% drop is remarkable, Alexander said.
But getting to zero is also remarkably difficult. In 2015, when Carter told reporters he hoped to outlive the Guinea worm, there were 22 reported cases according to figures supplied by the Carter Center. Since then, the annual number of cases has bounced up and down a bit, reaching as high as 54 in 2019 and as low as 13 in 2022.
So far this year there have been four cases reported, Alexander said. Reports of cases are sometimes delayed.
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Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment