The Carter Center International Task Force for Disease Eradication
Inspired by the successful eradication of smallpox in 1977, the International Task Force for Disease Eradication formed at The Carter Center in 1988 to evaluate disease control and prevention and the potential for eradicating other infectious diseases. Composed of scientists and notable international health organizations from around the world, the task force has identified seven diseases that could be eradicated.
Between 1988 and 1992 the task force concluded that six diseases — dracunculiasis, poliomyelitis, mumps, rubella, lymphatic filariasis, and cysticercosis — could be eradicated. Measles was added to this list with the current task force in 2002. (See list of eradication and elimination programs currently sanctioned by the World Health Organization.)
The current task force reconvened in June 2001 to work further on international health with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The main goals of the revived task force are to review progress in the field of disease eradication, review the status of selected diseases for control or eradication, and make recommendations regarding opportunities for eradication or better control of certain diseases.
In 2008, The Carter Center supported two task force recommendations to encourage cooperation between the Dominican Republic and Haiti to eliminate lymphatic filariasis and malaria from Hispaniola, and to convene the first program review for Buruli ulcer programs in Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo. (Read the report from the June 4, 2009 meeting of the ITFDE.)
Carter Center health programs address two of the diseases currently identified by the ITFDE for eradication (dracunculiasis and lymphatic filariasis) and three diseases identified for better control (onchocerciasis or river blindness, trachoma, and schistosomiasis).
Learn about program definitions for disease eradication, elimination, and control >>
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