guinea worm eradicate carter center.

The Carter Center says there were only 10 reported cases of Guinea worm infections confined to three countries in 2025. The new record low comes barely a year after the death of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who said often that he hoped to outlive the last Guinea worm infection in people. When the Carter Center set out to eradicate Guinea worm infections in the mid-1980s, the parasite still afflicted millions of people in developing countries. If successful, Guinea worm would join smallpox as only the second human disease to be eradicated. In 2025, four human cases were reported in Chad, four in Ethiopia and two in South Sudan. Animal infections still number in the hundreds.