Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter participated in a live online chat June 28, 2007, to discuss malaria and the article "The Ethiopia Campaign - Jimmy Carter Takes on Malaria," featured in the June 2007 issue of Smithsonian magazine.
For the article, Smithsonian contributing editor Robert Poole followed President Carter, now 82, through Ethiopia while the former President and his experts at The Carter Center investigated the current state of the disease. Now rare in developed countries, malaria kills more than a million victims each year in the world's poorest regions, with at least 300 million people incapacitated by malaria infections.
Fighting disease in developing countries has long been a priority for President Carter, who has overseen activities in 17 African countries to prevent or treat debilitating diseases such as Guinea worm, trachoma, schistosomiasis and river blindness.
In just a few years cases of Guinea worm have gone from 3.5 million to roughly 25,000-a 99.3 percent decrease. And the Atlanta-based Carter Center, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, treats about ten million people a year to prevent river blindness.
Smithsonian reports that President Carter and the Carter Center's efforts are particularly visible in Ethiopia, where The Carter Center is helping to train a corps of healthcare workers through seven universities in Ethiopia. The newly-trained medical personnel will then provide healthcare to Ethiopians in remote areas-areas that are severely underserved. Under an agreement with the Ethiopian government, The Carter Center will monitor the nation's malaria program until 2015, by which time it is hoped that epidemics of the disease will be relegated to a chapter of Ethiopian history. The Carter Center's cost would be $47 million, one of the organization's biggest investments ever.
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Carter Center Malaria Control Program
Malaria Control Program Director Frank O. Richards, Jr., M.D.
Malaria Control Program Co-Director Paul Emerson, Ph.D.
Read Feature Article, "New Malaria Program Blankets Areas of Ethiopia with Bed Nets"
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