Few realized the significance when the UAE’s founding father, HH Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, invited Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter to the UAE in July of 1990. The 39th president of the US was championing an initiative to eradicate a little-known parasitic disease that had a debilitating impact on millions of lives in Africa and Asia. Sheikh Zayed responded with a personal donation to the Carter Center’s Guinea Worm Eradication Program, which began a long-standing commitment by the Al Nahyan family to help abolish infectious diseases that disproportionally impact developing nations. Since then, the decades-long UAE-Carter Center partnership has helped avert at least 80 million cases of Guinea worm, and expanded to eliminate additional neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) that affect the world’s marginalized and most vulnerable communities.
1990
HH Sheikh Zayed invites Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter to the UAE and makes a personal commitment to the Carter Center campaign, kickstarting a decades-long philanthropic partnership.
1986
The Carter Center launches the first international campaign to eradicate Guinea worm. At the campaign’s inception, there were an estimated 3.5 million human cases.
The UAE and its leadership have been committed to fighting neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) for over 30 years. Since 2010, HH Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed has donated more than $400 million USD towards efforts to eliminate preventable infectious diseases, including polio, malaria and NTDs.