The foremost journal of tropical medicine in the United States has published a supplement honoring the public health legacy of former President Jimmy Carter and the late First Lady Rosalynn Carter. In a demonstration of technical expertise and the respect The Carter Center carries in that field, the supplement features 16 articles authored or co-authored by Carter Center experts. Learn more »
Helping countries control or eliminate diseases is no easy feat — helping them do so when they’re in the midst of armed conflict is exponentially more challenging. Learn more »
The quest for health among neglected people is marked by daily acts of heroism. Take Lodai Peter Linus’ actions. Learn more »
The Carter Center sent a large contingent to the 72nd Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH), held Oct. 18-22 in Chicago. Learn more »
Jude Musa, 13, from a small community in Nigeria, stood proudly in 2016 as he received a dose of anti-parasite medicine. It was part of a ceremony marking the 500 millionth treatment The Carter Center has helped distribute to fight neglected tropical diseases. Learn more about the celebration and NTDs from our archives. Learn more »
Mulat Zerihun cares about the eyes and speaks from the heart. Learn more »
By Dr. Kashef Ijaz, Vice President, Health Programs, The Carter Center; Kelly Callahan, M.P.H., Director, Trachoma Control Program, The Carter Center; Dr. Emmanuel Miri, Nigeria Country Representative, The Carter Center; Dr. Zerihun Tadesse, Ethiopia Country Representative, The Carter Center
From the vantage point of a richly resourced and powerful country or society, it’s easy to believe that colonialism is a thing of the past. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The sad fact is that the effects of a colonial mind-set are alive and well in some corners of the global health community. Learn more »
In 2006, a relatively new development officer at The Carter Center, Madelle Hatch, took part in a career fair at Midvale Elementary School in an Atlanta suburb. Learn more »
By Gregory S. Noland, director, River Blindness Elimination Program, and Dr. Kashef Ijaz, vice president, health programs, The Carter Center
World Sight Day is the second Thursday in October, and we at The Carter Center and our country offices are doing our part to preserve vision in vulnerable populations through our robust river blindness and trachoma programs. Learn more »
By Kelly Callahan, director, Trachoma Control Program
Public health work is always challenging, but some seasons are more challenging than others. And wow, have the last three years been challenging — especially in the part of Ethiopia where the Carter Center’s Trachoma Control Program works. Learn more »
By Paige Alexander, chief executive officer of The Carter Center
This month, I was pleased to sign the Kigali Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases, signifying the Carter Center’s 100% commitment to work with dozens of countries, donors, and organizational partners to tackle these terrible diseases Learn more »
Distributing medication to fight trachoma in Ethiopia’s Amhara region is challenging under normal circumstances. It’s a huge area with a large population and mountainous terrain. Amazingly, an estimated 14 million people in the region are treated with antibiotics for trachoma every year. Our Ethiopian colleagues have always been remarkably dedicated, but the complications of the coronavirus pandemic have really shown what they’re made of. Learn more »
Jan. 30, 2022, marked the third annual World NTD Day, highlighting the global community’s commitment to ending neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) that cause immeasurable suffering among the world’s most marginalized communities. Together The Carter Center and our partners lit up the world as we celebrated hard-earned progress and took action to #EndtheNeglect and #BeatNTDs.
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By Paige Alexander, chief executive officer, and Kashef Ijaz, vice president, Health Programs
The 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly opens Tuesday, Sept. 14. It is a time of great anticipation as representatives of 193 member states come together in the great hall to discuss issues and set an agenda for the coming year. World political leaders, including President Joe Biden, will give speeches that will be closely watched for clues and outright declarations regarding a wide variety of international challenges, global health among them. Learn more »
By Vanessa Scholtens, program associate, Trachoma Control Program
How do we know if a person has trachoma, a bacterial eye disease? A trained worker must examine a person’s inner eyelid and look for the signs. Learn more »
By Dr. Kashef Ijaz, vice president, health programs
The Carter Center’s neglected tropical disease programs treat and prevent Guinea worm disease, trachoma, river blindness, lymphatic filariasis, and schistosomiasis, with the goal to control, eliminate, and eradicate. Beyond the alleviation of the human suffering caused by these illnesses, this work brings ancillary benefits to communities, health systems, and infrastructure that may be just as important. Learn more »
By Paige Alexander, chief executive officer, and Kashef Ijaz, vice president, health programs
The world’s most vulnerable people work hard every day to overcome poverty and disease. They aren’t interested in handouts, but with a hand up they can get the resources they need to surmount obstacles to prosperity and peace. Learn more »
Mass drug administration, in which entire communities receive drug treatment to halt disease transmission, was interrupted or delayed, but intense work went on behind the scenes to develop sets of COVID-safe procedures.
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By Dr. Kashef Ijaz, vice president, health programs
The observance of World Neglected Tropical Disease Day on Jan. 30 (following the public launch of the 2030 NTD Road Map by the WHO on Jan. 28) prompts me to reflect on my good fortune in overseeing the Carter Center’s tireless work to free people from an array of illnesses that cause untold misery and perpetuate the cycle of poverty. Learn more »
By Kelly Callahan, M.P.H., director, Trachoma Control Program
When COVID-19 appeared, the first thing public health experts advised us all to do was to wash our hands frequently and thoroughly. This is excellent advice, and it’s what the Carter Center’s Trachoma Control Program has been teaching people for 20 years. Learn more »
At a mobile surgery camp in Lotien, a village in South Sudan’s Eastern Equatoria region, a man requested surgery to help his son Lochin, age 11, who was suffering from trachomatous trichiasis (TT). After walking 245 kilometers (more than 150 miles) from their home, Lochin and his father arrived just before the temporary camp was nearing its end.
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By Angelia Sanders, associate director, Trachoma Control Program and vice chair, International Coalition for Trachoma Control
Natural disasters, conflict, and other factors can force entire populations to leave their homes and seek safer living conditions elsewhere. Such people are known as internally displaced persons (or IDPs) if they move within their home country or refugees if they cross international boundaries. Refugees are protected by international laws; IDPs are not. Learn more »
A low, boxy building made of rough but neatly mortared concrete blocks stands in the city of Mirriah, located in central Niger. Out back are a three-panel solar power array, a satellite dish, and a 100-foot-tall mast antenna. Inside are two desks with whirring computers, a small room with an electronic audio control panel, and a glassed-in room equipped with a round table, chairs, and two microphones on bases fashioned out of machinery gears.
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Abdalla Yousif recalls how heavy the rain was in Blue Nile state, Sudan. After four hours of torrential rain, the trachoma survey team he was traveling with decided it was best to spend the night in the car. The next morning, they did what they had done so often, they tested the road with their feet, pushed their car out of the mud, and continued to the next village. Learn more »
In a small, dimly lit office in Birni N'Gaouré, a town in the Dosso region of southern Niger, are a desk, a laptop computer, a lamp, and a ceiling fan. Occupying one wall are square cubbyholes brimming with colorful binders. It looks like something one might see in a kindergarten classroom.
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Rakia Ado, 20, was at home one day in Katirge, a remote village in southern Niger, when a team of government health workers and Carter Center staffers showed up. The workers, trained and equipped by The Carter Center, explained their mission and asked if they could examine Ado’s eyes and eyelids.
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If you want to get things done in Niger, it helps to know Mohamed Salissou Kané. The Carter Center’s country representative in Niger seems to have connections everywhere.
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By Ambassador (ret.) Mary Ann Peters, chief executive officer
At The Carter Center, we believe people can improve their own lives when they have the right skills, knowledge, and access to resources. I’d like to introduce you to a few people who are making a real difference in their communities. Learn more »
It’s good to distribute medicine that helps people avoid a painful, potentially blinding eye disease. It’s even better when that medicine also helps keep babies and children alive.
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A landmark study in which The Carter Center is participating could radically change the public health model in the developing world, experts say. Learn more »
Even in the shade it was 105 degrees Fahrenheit. It can be challenging to focus in that kind of heat, but Dr. Saisabil Omer and Dr. Mayasa Mustafa were committed to providing sight-saving surgery to the men and women who came to the trachoma clinic in Al Fashaga, Gedarif state, Sudan.
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In 2018, The Carter Center is marking 20 years of impact against trachoma, the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness.
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By Kelly Callahan, director, Trachoma Control Program
Hard work for a good cause can be its own reward. It’s even better when you have results to show for it. In 2018 The Carter Center is marking 20 years of impact against trachoma, the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness. Learn more »
Tigist Astale, an epidemiologist for The Carter Center in Ethiopia, has faced down angry dogs, runaway cattle, and crocodile-filled rivers. She supervises extensive field work in far-flung locations all over the Amhara region of Ethiopia, a region with a considerable burden of trachoma. Because of her commitment to gathering quality data, the trachoma control program continues to implement effective interventions to help reduce blindness in Amhara.
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By Kelly Callahan, M.P.H., director, Carter Center Trachoma Control Program
One of the horrible hallmarks of advanced trachoma is a painful inward turning of the eyelids. This condition, called trachomatous trichiasis, causes the sufferer’s eyelashes to scrape the surface of the eye, often leading to blindness. Among other interventions, The Carter Center trains and equips local health-care workers to perform a simple outpatient surgical procedure that reverses the condition. Learn more »
By Dean G. Sienko, M.D., M.S., vice president, Carter Center Health Programs
I’m the new guy around here. Although I’ve visited and worked in many places during my medical career – including multiple overseas deployments with the U.S. Army – my first trip abroad with The Carter Center was a new highlight. Learn more »
Tessougue Yietere lives in a village called Logo in Mali's Mopti region, where the Sahara desert gives way to the Central African rainforest. For many years Yietere had suffered from trachoma, a tropical eye infection that can lead to blindness.
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Thirteen-year-old Jude Musa looked serious, even stoic, as a volunteer from his village gauged his height with a measuring stick. Community drug distributor Yusuf Maikeffi determined the proper dose of praziquantel and handed the tablets to the boy, who popped them into his mouth and chased them with fresh water from a plastic pouch. Learn more »
The Carter Center in 2016 surpassed 500 million doses of medication distributed to fight neglected tropical diseases.
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"Trachoma: Defeating a Blinding Curse," a documentary feature film that follows Carter Center staff, global health partners, and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter engaged in a comprehensive strategy to eliminate blinding trachoma in Ethiopia, aired on American Public Television stations nationwide this fall.
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Kelly Callahan was 8 years old when she unwittingly charted her life's course. "I was sitting under the dining table with my neighbor's dog, listening to my mother's conversation about Liberia," Callahan said. "I thought, 'Yeah — I'm going to go there.' And from then on, I always knew I would go to Africa. I just didn't know why or for what."
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In 2014, Carter Center health programs assisted in the distribution of more drug treatments for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) than in any previous year, demonstrating the Center’s commitment to alleviating suffering and improving the lives of those who live in the world’s poorest and most isolated communities. Learn more »
By Mulat Zerihun Lemu, regional manager, Carter Center trachoma and malaria control projects in the Amhara region of Ethiopia.
I learned how great a need there was for eye services in my community during the 10 years I spent working for the Ethiopian government as an ophthalmic expert. Ethiopia has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, and trachoma is a major cause of this disability in my country. Learn more »
By Paige Rohe, assistant director, Health Programs.
It may be tempting to hear about a neglected disease like trachoma and the 390 million people globally at risk and think of trachoma only as another sad statistic in a world where there is too much suffering and where there are not enough solutions. Yet, while trachoma is a disease of poverty, it also was once much more prolific than many people know. Until only a few decades ago, trachoma was endemic to the United States and my home state of Georgia. Learn more »
A leader in the eradication and elimination of diseases, The Carter Center is fighting six preventable diseases — Guinea worm, river blindness, trachoma, schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis, and malaria — by using health education and simple, low-cost methods.
The following slideshow illustrates some of the fundamental tools and approaches used by The Carter Center to help build a healthier and more peaceful world.
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Ethiopia's pioneering efforts to eliminate blinding trachoma, in partnership with The Carter Center, Lions Clubs International Foundation, and others, are featured in the documentary series "Lifelines: The Quest for Global Health," which will be broadcast outside the United States on Al Jazeera English. The series also will highlight the Center's Guinea Worm Eradication Program in South Sudan and the River Blindness Elimination Program in Uganda. Learn more »
By Stephanie Palmer, assistant director, Trachoma Control Program
Flies buzzed in our faces as Fatahou Ibrahim, a Nigerien public health student, and I interviewed Assana*, a young woman with the eye disease trichiasis, and her mother, Habiba, sitting on colorful plastic mats beneath a tree. Assana, in her early 20s, said that trichiasis felt as though “someone stuck a needle in my eye, as if someone hit me.” Learn more »
In early November, The Carter Center reached a trachoma milestone: supporting the distribution of more than 100 million doses of the trachoma-fighting drug Zithromax®, donated by Pfizer Inc. These treatments were provided over the last 11 years to trachoma-endemic communities in six African countries: Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, Niger, Sudan, and South Sudan. Learn more »
The crowded courtyard at Chuahit Health Clinic in North Gondar, Ethiopia, is full of people — elders talking, mothers swaying side to side to soothe their infants, health workers hurrying back and forth between offices. Suddenly, a small corner of the clinic erupts in laughter.
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On Nov. 5, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter joined Pfizer Inc. CEO Ian Read at Pfizer headquarters in New York City to celebrate major progress in the global campaign against the blinding disease trachoma as the Center prepares to distribute its 100 millionth dose of Zithromax ®, a Pfizer-donated antibiotic used to treat the disease.
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By Carter Center Trachoma Control Program Director, Dr. Paul Emerson
This is an excerpt from Carter Center Trachoma Control Program Director Dr. Paul Emerson’s Huffington Post Blog, “The Eye of the Beholder: Why Fighting Trachoma Matters.” Learn more »
Stewart was a summer 2012 graduate assistant for the Carter Center’s Trachoma Control Program. She traveled to Ethiopia to help survey families about the Center’s trachoma prevention activities in partnership with the local communities. Learn more »
It was late afternoon in Dorum, southern Niger, when a man and his elderly mother rode in on a motorcycle. The woman's calm façade belied the excruciating pain she felt. An hour-long ride outdoors through dusty roads in the midday sun comprised some of the worst conditions a woman with an advanced eye disease could face. But as agonizing as it was, the journey likely saved her eyesight
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Use becomes more rare as Center, partners make major strides against the disease. The wishbone-like tweezers, folded from pieces of tin cans, look like a charm or pendant, but have a gruesome purpose. Learn more »
he Carter Center has become a global leader in the eradication and elimination of diseases, focusing efforts to build health and hope in some of the poorest and most isolated places on earth.
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Completely eliminating a disease from a country twice the size of Texas is no easy task. Salissou Kane, the Carter Center's country representative for Niger learned this time and again during more than two decades fighting Guinea worm in his homeland. Now that the disease has been wiped out nationwide, Kane is using his hard-won knowledge of Niger's complex multicultural communities to tackle to the bacterial eye disease trachoma.
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From Nov. 5-11, 20,000 health workers and volunteers will walk the countryside of western Amhara region, Ethiopia. Their quest: treat every person at risk—approximately 10 million—for trachoma control and screen as needed for malaria. In this Q&A, Paul Emerson, director of the Center's Trachoma Control Program, explains the remarkable results of these "Maltra"—malaria and trachoma—weeks, a collaborate effort between the Lions Clubs International Foundation and The Carter Center.
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"I think I have something to share with another country" says Sadi Moussa, explaining why he recently relocated to Mali to help tackle public health problems after almost two decades doing similar work in his home country of Niger.
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Paul Emerson entered the modest hut unannounced, knowing what he was hoping to find, but ready for anything. Emerson - director of the Carter Center's Trachoma Control Program - had visited this family before. In 2005, he had accompanied President and Mrs. Carter to Mosebo village, northwest Ethiopia, to help launch a comprehensive trachoma initiative in the region.
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Impoverished communities in Amhara Region, Ethiopia—the world’s most trachoma-endemic area—are harnessing an innovative and far-reaching approach to treating and preventing this blinding bacterial infection. Approximately every six months, rotating between the eastern and western halves of Amhara, The Carter Center, in partnership with the Ethiopia Ministry of Health and Lions Clubs International Foundation, mobilizes millions of people in one week. Learn more »
In Aloshi village in central Nigeria, four-year-old David Nuhu stands quietly as a health worker measures his height against a brightly colored pole. The health worker will use the measuring stick to carefully calculate what dose of Zithromax® (donated by Pfizer Inc.) will safely treat the little boy’s trachoma infection. Learn more »
Ghana recently became the first sub-Saharan African nation to eliminate blinding trachoma as a public health problem, thanks to a decade-long effort of Ghana Health Services in partnership with the Carter Center’s Trachoma Control Program. Trachoma has devastating effects on communities already on the brink of survival, but its most severe form — blindness — is now rarely found in Ghana due to the success of the SAFE strategy — Surgery, Antibiotics ®, Facial cleanliness, and Environmental hygiene. Trachoma thrives in a dry and dusty environment like that in Tingoli, northern Ghana, which is pictured here.
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Mekuria Amare, a health officer in the North Gondar Zone of Ethiopia, is currently completing his clinical training at Gondar University to become a medical doctor. Mekuria initially received training as a health officer, providing him the opportunity to provide general health care to a rural population. Learn more »
With a population of approximately 17 million, the Amhara Region of Ethiopia is one of the most severely affected trachoma-endemic areas in the world. There are currently more than 15 million people at risk of infection and approximately 470,000 people visually impaired as a result of trichiasis, the blinding form of the disease. In addition, the region is susceptible to seasonal malaria epidemics, putting the majority of the population at risk for the potentially fatal disease.
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Teshome Gebre, the Carter Center's country representative for health programs in Ethiopia, likes to joke that he has been in public health service for what seems like 100 years. Yet, it's impossible to ignore the great joy Teshome has received from a lifetime dedicated to fighting disease in his native Ethiopia.
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Impoverished communities in Amhara Region, Ethiopia—the world's most trachoma-endemic area—are harnessing an innovative and far-reaching approach to treating and preventing this blinding bacterial infection.
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The Carter Center is hosting its 2009 health program reviews March 23-31, 2010, with experts from around the world –including representatives from partner organizations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lions Clubs International, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – gathered in Atlanta to assess program status and adopt recommendations for the coming year. Learn more »
Mekuria Amare, a health officer in the North Gondar Zone of Ethiopia, is currently completing his clinical training at Gondar University to become a medical doctor. Mekuria initially received training as a health officer, providing him the opportunity to provide general health care to a rural population. In 2007, he was trained by The Carter Center to provide trichiasis surgery at his health post in the remote district of Telemt.
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Three years ago, Yalanbu Zenabu of Botingli, northern Ghana, was consumed by the daily suffering of trachoma. As a victim of trichiasis, the blinding form of trachoma, her disease had progressed to the stage where her eyelashes scratched against her eye, causing intense pain and debilitation.
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It is nearly evening in the desert village of Adorihi in southern Niger, and 36-year-old Aisha Oumarou crouches over her cooking fire carefully mixing oil into a pot on coals. Although the mixture smells faintly of peanuts, the hot dough that Oumarou extracts from the pot and rolls between her hands is not destined to be the evening's meal, but balls of soap.
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With a population of approximately 17 million, the Amhara Region of Ethiopia is one of the most severely affected trachoma-endemic areas in the world. There are currently more than 15 million people at risk of infection and approximately 470,000 people visually impaired as a result of trichiasis, the blinding form of the disease. In addition, the region is susceptible to seasonal malaria epidemics, putting the majority of the population at risk for the potentially fatal disease.
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Conventional wisdom says trachoma — the leading cause of preventable blindness worldwide — can only be treated, not eliminated. But Teshome Gebre, The Carter Center's point man for trachoma control in Ethiopia, hopes to defy that wisdom. He is convinced that trachoma's blinding and debilitating effects can be stopped before the end of the next decade, the targeted goal for global trachoma elimination.
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Growing up in England, Dr. Paul Emerson dreamed of becoming a scientist and an educator, the kind of individual who would have both the technical knowledge and practical skills to show people how to better their lives. That dream led him first to teach in England and Africa, then to become a medical entomologist, and now to The Carter Center, which he joined three years ago as director of the Trachoma Control Program. "My specialty is the humble house fly and the diseases it transmits," he said. One of the worst of these is trachoma, a bacterial infection of the eyes.
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To help combat neglected tropical diseases suffered by millions of people, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged $10 million to fund two groundbreaking Carter Center initiatives in Nigeria.
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Children in the United States may not give grape-flavored cough syrup another thought, but in Eastern Equatoria, Sudan, children look forward to their yearly dose of an antibiotic that tastes like bananas. The medicine, azithromycin, is one part of a strategy designed to prevent blinding trachoma, a bacterial eye disease and leading cause of preventable blindness in the world.
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"My mother believed you got trachoma from crying," said Neter Nadew, a 36-year-old Ethiopian mother of four who suffers as her mother did from trachoma, a bacterial eye disease that can lead to blindness. Nadew's mother was forced to pluck out her eyelashes to prevent the onset of blindness in the later stages of the disease.
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His name means "water" and "life" in the Southeastern region of his native Nigeria, and perhaps no name could be more appropriate for Dr. Emmanuel Miri, resident technical adviser for the Carter Center's health programs in Nigeria.
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Memunatu Alhassan lives in Botingli village in Northern Ghana. She is an active member of her village's radio-listening club and frequently appears on the shows herself. The Carter Center supports the production of trachoma radio shows, pays for airtime, and has provided 250 Freeplay™ radios to the radio-listening clubs.
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Imagine a nation almost half the size of the United States where large portions of the population are sick -- not with just one disease but several at once. Such is the daily reality for those living in Nigeria, a nation with one of the highest burdens of disease in Africa.
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Yengussie Tebeje, 55, sits outside her hut next to a small fire in the rural Ethiopian village of Mosebo. As flies dart around and land on her worn face, she describes her struggle against trachoma, a debilitating eye disease.
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An assessment of the Carter Center's latrine project in Niger, undertaken to reduce incidence of trachoma, has shown encouraging results. After one year, household latrines are widely accepted, used and maintained.
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