The New York Times on Monday profiled Donald Hopkins, who is leading the fight to eradicate Guinea worm in his role as “vice president for health programs at the Carter Center, the group founded by former President Jimmy Carter to advance human rights and fight disease.†The article examines the path Hopkins took to become a physician and how he developed an interest in filtering water in remote locations to rid it of tiny organisms that can spread Guinea worm. The newspaper notes, “Nearly all the remaining cases [of Guinea worm] are in South Sudan, which is newly independent and largely at peace. A few are in northern Mali, which is too dangerous for eradicators to work in right now but is becoming safer since French troops ousted Islamist rebels. Ethiopia and Chad, the other two countries with cases, are not at war†(McNeil, 4/22).
This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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