International Task Force for Disease Eradication – Articles By Carter Center Experts

Jan. 3, 2013
Disease Eradication
New England Journal of Medicine, Vol 368 No. 1.pp. 53-64. Doi:10.1056/NEJMra1200391
Author: Donald R. Hopkins. Since the last case of naturally-occurring smallpox in 1977, there have been three major international conferences devoted to the concept of disease eradication. Several other diseases have been considered as potential candidates for eradication, but the World Health Organization (WHO) has targeted only two other diseases for global eradication after smallpox. In 1986, WHO's policy-making body, the World Health Assembly, adopted the elimination of dracunculiasis (Guinea worm disease) as a global goal, and it declared eradication of poliomyelitis a global goal in 1988. Although both diseases now appear to be close to eradication, the fact that neither goal has been achieved after more than two decades, and several years beyond the initial target dates for their eradication, underscores the daunting challenge of such efforts, as does the failure of previous attempts to eradicate malaria, hookworm, yaws and other diseases. "Disease Eradication" was published as part one of "A Global View of Health – An Unfolding Series." Read the overview of the series >

Dec. 6, 2010
Progress on Neglected Disease is Moot If We Neglect to Count (PDF)
This article, by Carter Center Health Programs Vice President Donald R. Hopkins, M.D., M.P.H., was published in the Dec. 6, 2010, edition of Nature Medicine. This shortened version of the full magazine is reprinted with permission. The complete issue can be viewed at: http://www.nature.com/nm/index.html.
The recent global campaign launched against a select number of neglected tropical diseases is a welcome development. But we should be as careful about measuring progress toward the control or elimination of these diseases as we are about choosing which ones to target.

March 30, 2010
A Project for Haiti: The Eradication of Two Diseases
This letter to the editor of the New York Times by Carter Center Vice President for Health Programs Dr. Donald R. Hopkins was published March 30, 2010, in response to the March 28, 2010 editorial "Making Haiti Whole."
Two projects that the donors conference on Haiti should consider this week are the binational plan that Haiti and the Dominican Republic announced last October to eliminate malaria by 2020, and the plan that Haiti announced simultaneously to eliminate lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis) by 2020 (the Dominican Republic expects to eliminate lymphatic filariasis this year).

July 30, 2009
The Allure of Eradication (PDF)
This article, by Carter Center Health Programs Vice President Donald R. Hopkins, M.D., M.P.H., was published in the July 30, 2009, edition of Global Health Magazine. This shortened version of the full magazine is reprinted with permission. The complete issue can be viewed at: http://www.globalhealthmagazine.com/index.php.
U.S. President Thomas Jefferson's message in 1806 to the discoverer of smallpox vaccination articulated the vision and predicted the outcome and consequences of smallpox eradication, but badly misjudged how long it would take for the world to get there.