Forty years of patient, unglamorous work. The second disease in human history to be eradicated — without vaccines, without medicine, one village at a time.
Guinea worm disease is caused by a parasitic nematode transmitted in water. Drink contaminated water, and a year later, a worm up to three feet long emerges from a blister in your leg over the course of weeks. There is no vaccine. There is no medicine. The only treatment is to slowly wind the emerging worm around a stick, centimeter by centimeter, day after day, for weeks.
In 1986, the Carter Center began leading the global eradication campaign. The approach was almost absurdly simple: teach people to filter their drinking water. Provide cloth filters and pipe filters. Educate communities. Train village volunteers. Then wait, and watch, and count.
No breakthrough technology. No pharmaceutical intervention. Just people showing up, village by village, for forty years.
Drag the slider. Each dot represents 10,000 cases.
Guinea worm afflicts an estimated 3.5 million people across 21 countries in Africa and Asia. The Carter Center, CDC, UNICEF, and WHO launch the eradication effort. The tool: cloth water filters.
892,055 cases reported — the first formal global tally. Pakistan and 17 African countries actively fighting.
First country declared free. Carter personally persuaded President Zia-ul-Haq. "Village volunteers" educated communities about water filtration. ~223,000 cases remain elsewhere.
Carter negotiates a ceasefire in Sudan's civil war — the longest humanitarian ceasefire in history — specifically to allow health workers to reach endemic areas. ~129,000 cases.
Guinea worm eradicated from all Asian countries. The fight concentrates in Africa. Cases down to ~16,000.
542 cases. A new complication: guinea worm detected in dogs for the first time, primarily in Chad. Eradication now requires controlling animal transmission too.
22 cases. Carter, diagnosed with melanoma, says his "last wish" is to see the last Guinea worm dead before him. Only 4 countries still endemic.
Jimmy Carter dies at age 100, having led the campaign for 38 years. He didn't quite see his wish fulfilled. 15 cases remain. The work continues.
10 human cases worldwide. On track to be only the second disease ever eradicated, after smallpox. WHO target: 2030.
Of 21 originally endemic countries, 6 remain uncertified. Human cases 2015–2025.
The eradication of Guinea worm has prevented an estimated 100 million cases and 9.6 million years of suffering. It was achieved by thousands of village volunteers in some of the poorest, most remote, most conflict-affected communities on Earth.
No Nobel-winning discovery made this possible. No Silicon Valley startup. No AI. Just cloth filters, education, patience, and the willingness to show up, year after year, in places most of the world has never heard of.
The remaining cases are in some of the most challenging environments imaginable: South Sudan's remote cattle camps, Chad's fishing communities, Ethiopia's highlands. Areas with civil conflict, nomadic populations, no infrastructure. The final stretch is the hardest.
But the workers keep going. Village by village. Filter by filter. Worm by worm.