Jimmy Carter: Waging Peace. Fighting Disease.

By: By Jordan Tappis | April 15, 2010 | Profile

James Earl Carter was the first U.S. president born in a hospital. That might seem like a trivial fact, but given Carter’s lifelong dedication to the advancement of human rights, one can’t help but trace his benevolence back to the beginning, an era when state-of-the-art advancements in science and medicine resulted in longer, healthier lives for people affluent enough to benefit from them. Carter’s unwavering devotion to the greatest humanitarian causes of our time span the majority of his 86 years, and he has been a steadfast bastion of freedom and equality since beginning his political career in the early 1960s.

Like President Obama, Carter took the oath of office during a period of intense stagflation. An economic upheaval persisted throughout No. 39’s term eroding his popularity and his political capital to such a degree that despite his many presidential successes, Carter was unable to recover from several major disasters, principally the 1979 Iran hostage crisis — an event that marred the Carter administration and contributed to his 1980 re-election defeat.

Yet despite his moderately successful presidency, Carter is widely considered one of the greatest ex-presidents in U.S. history. Through The Carter Center, a not-for-profit organization founded in 1982 by President Carter and his wife of 64 years, Rosalynn, he has been instrumental in improving the quality of life for millions of people in more than 70 countries. In 2002, he became the first (and only) American president awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after leaving office — acknowledgement of his prodigious work in international conflict resolution, democratic advancement, human rights, and economic and social development.

But perhaps Carter’s greatest post-presidential achievement is his involvement in the near eradication of a debilitating parasitic disease called Guinea worm, a water-born infection that afflicted more than 3.5 million people in 1986 when The Carter Center first took up the cause. In 2009, after more than 20 years of targeted engagement, The Carter Center reported a 99.9 percent global reduction in the number of Guinea worm cases due in large part to a bottom-up educational campaign spearheaded by Carter himself. Experts predict Guinea worm will be the first parasitic disease to be eradicated and the first disease in history to be eradicated through education and behavioral change.

After a recent trip to Africa where The Carter Center was in the final planning stages of a major election-monitoring initiative in the Sudan, President Carter was gracious enough to answer a few of my questions.