As Carter wrote in his memoir, a pivotal moment in his and the center’s quest for a new role came in 1986, when an old friend and adviser visited the Carter Center and issued a challenge. Peter Bourne, who had counseled Carter first as governor of Georgia and later in the White House, had gone on to be the United Nations assistant secretary-general, where he established and ran the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade, a program aimed at delivering clean water and sanitation around the world.
Bourne made a presentation on Guinea worm, a parasite that is contracted by drinking infested water and that burrows into an infected person’s body, causing agonizing pain. Bourne displayed pictures of what Carter described as the “most obnoxious and neglected of all waterborne diseases.” The former president urged the center to study the issue, and Guinea worm eradication became its first global health project.
Donald Hopkins, who worked on Guinea worm control at the CDC in the early 1980s, remembers that day. He suggested the heavy toll Guinea worm disease extracted from the communities it afflicts resonated with Carter. It keeps infected children out of school and infected farmers out of their field, jeopardizing families’ livelihoods and their children’s futures.
“I think it was just a deep-in-his-bones empathy for people who the world neglected,” said Hopkins. “And the diseases were a means to an end to help them improve their lives.”
When Hopkins was at the CDC, getting attention and funding for Guinea worm control was a challenge. “It was really heavy lifting because most people didn’t know about Guinea worm disease,” he said. “Those that knew about it didn’t care about it, except for people who were suffering from it. International donors, agencies, etc., were pretty much oblivious to it and didn’t understand the opportunity it presented.”
After retiring from the CDC, Hopkins joined the Carter Center in 1987 and later served as director of its health programs. (He is now special adviser for its Guinea worm eradication program.) He quickly saw the difference made by having a former U.S. president put his shoulder to the wheel.
He and his CDC colleagues had hoped to find a celebrity advocate to raise awareness of the issue, someone like the actor Harry Belafonte, who in 1987 was named a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. “But, you know, Harry Belafonte or anybody else like him would not have been able to pick up the phone and get heads of state on the line and get the kind of entree and response from international donors, from the public media, as well as from the heads of government of the countries that had Guinea worm disease, the way President Carter could,” Hopkins said.