Health Programs

The Carter Center took a significant step forward in its global campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease, with just 10 human cases reported worldwide in 2025, the lowest number ever recorded. Forty years ago, an estimated 3.5 million people were afflicted with the disease every year across 21 countries in Africa and Asia.

Only three countries saw human cases in 2025: four cases each in Ethiopia and Chad and two cases in South Sudan. Angola, Cameroon, and Mali reported zero human cases for the second consecutive year. To eradicate Guinea worm disease, animal infections also must be halted; they rose slightly in 2025 to 683, compared with 664 in 2024, down from 887 in 2023. Chad, once the epicenter for animal infections, reduced infections by 47%, its sixth consecutive year of progress.

In May 2025, a Center delegation witnessed the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, unanimously adopt a resolution to accelerate Guinea worm eradication. And in October 2025, the world saw the release of the independent film “The President and the Dragon,” which documents the decades-long fight against Guinea worm disease, featuring The Carter Center and its co-founder, President Jimmy Carter.

The Carter Center continues to work with ministries of health in Africa and Latin America to stop the transmission of river blindness, a parasitic infection that’s one of the leading causes of preventable blindness worldwide. The program expanded in 2025 into Chad, where an estimated 1.7 million people received treatment in July. In 2025, the Center assisted in the distribution of 40 million treatments across eight countries in Africa and the Americas. Since the river blindness program began in 1996, the Center has assisted with about 650 million treatments across the globe.

For three decades, The Carter Center has led the global fight against trachoma, transforming lives through health education, surgical procedures, and mass drug administration. In 2025, the Center worked to accelerate progress with new strategies, including an increase in the frequency of medication distribution and use of a nonsurgical treatment for less severe cases of trachomatous trichiasis (TT), the advanced and blinding form of the disease. Working with national ministries of health in Ethiopia, Niger, South Sudan, and Sudan, The Carter Center provided 31,284 individuals with vision-saving surgeries, 64% of whom were women. In South Sudan, the Center has identified more than 100 children under age 11 with severe TT who need immediate attention to prevent blindness. The Carter Center is working with partners to find ways to address this urgent need. In a November pilot project, the Center chartered a plane to fly nine children from their rural community to the capital city of Juba to receive sight-saving surgery at the country’s only pediatric eye center. And despite ongoing insecurity in challenging areas, the Center helped distribute more than 11.1 million antibiotic treatments through mass drug administration — including the first distribution in Sudan since war began in April 2023.

Schistosomiasis is a waterborne parasitic infection that damages internal organs. Commonly affecting school-age children, it can cause blood in urine and stool, pain, weakness, and stunted growth. Alongside the Federal Ministry of Health in Nigeria, where more people need treatment for the disease than any other country, The Carter Center has helped deliver 33 million treatments for schistosomiasis since 1999. In 2025, Nigeria continued its transition to full ownership of the schistosomiasis program started with the Center, embedding efforts to rid the country of the disease into national, state, and district-level public health initiatives and local institutions. In Uganda, schistosomiasis treatments were integrated into mass drug administration for river blindness in three districts.

The Carter Center works to eliminate transmission of lymphatic filariasis, a disease that causes swelling of the limbs and genitals, in Africa and the Caribbean. In 2025, the Center assisted in the distribution of nearly 14 million treatments for the disease, bringing the cumulative total to nearly 222 million since 2000. The Center’s work on this disease expanded into Chad and Madagascar, increasing the number of partner countries to eight. Working with the ministries of health in Chad and Madagascar, the Center helped reach more than 7 million people in the two countries for mass drug administration. Survey results from four districts in Nigeria demonstrated that transmission of lymphatic filariasis has been interrupted, meaning all 141 districts historically supported by The Carter Center in Nigeria have met the criteria to stop treatment for this disease. And on the island of Hispaniola, which is shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the Center continued to fight lymphatic filariasis alongside malaria, a life-threatening parasitic disease transmitted by mosquitoes. In Haiti, three districts met key epidemiological benchmarks for eliminating lymphatic filariasis as a public health problem.

Thirteen journalists from the United States, Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, and Pakistan were awarded Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism. The Center’s U.S. newsroom collaborative expanded to more than 50 newsrooms in 18 states.

Globally, in addition to celebrating a 15-year mental health partnership in Liberia, the Center secured grants for youth mental health in Sierra Leone, trained health professionals in Nigeria and Uganda, and supported strategic planning and regulation development in Uganda.