The New York Times reports:

Jimmy Carter’s five decades of leadership in global health brought a hideous disease to the brink of elimination, helped deliver basic health and sanitation to millions of people and set a new standard for how aid agencies should engage with the countries they assist.

It was quiet work and drew relatively little attention because it was focused on afflictions that plague the poorest people in the most marginalized places, but it had enormous impact.

“The work in global health may turn out to be some of the most important work that he did,” said Dr. William H. Foege, who helped lead the successful effort to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s and played a key role in drawing the former president into the field of global health after he left office.

Mr. Carter, the former president who died on Sunday at age 100, saw his health-care work through the prism of a larger effort for basic rights and as a tool for peace building.

“We believe access to health care is a human right, especially among poor people afflicted with disease who are forgotten, ignored and often without hope,” he wrote in 2001 after a trip to lobby Latin American leaders on neglected diseases. “Just to know that someone cares about them not only can ease their physical pain but also remove an element of alienation and anger that can lead to hatred and violence.”

He used his rare status as a former head of state to lobby presidents and prime ministers on behalf of their poorest citizens. He and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, trekked to remote corners of countries including Chad and Ethiopia to visit and comfort the sick. Then they traveled back to capital cities where in private meetings or, if those did not produce results, news conferences, they pressed for action on behalf of those same people. [Continue reading…]