In partnership with the Carter Center, the Institute for Leadership and the Public Good will host a public screening of The President and the Dragon. This powerful new documentary traces former President Jimmy Carter's decades-long campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease, reducing cases from 3.5 million a year in 1986 to just 15 today, and putting the disease on the brink of becoming only the second in history to be eradicated.
Get Your Tickets
The President and the Dragon
Tues., 27 October 2026
5:30 - 8:30 p.m.
Doors open at 5 p.m.
Magnolia Ballroom
Georgia College
300 West Hancock Street
Milledgeville, GA 31061
About the Film
“The President and the Dragon,” a powerful new documentary chronicling former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s decades-long fight to eradicate an ancient parasite.
For centuries, Guinea worm disease plagued humanity, causing tremendous pain and ruining millions of lives. Medicine didn’t work on the parasite. Neither did vaccines. It seemed like nothing could stop Guinea worm disease’s devastating impact.
Then the monster met its match.
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President Carter championed the global effort to eradicate Guinea worm disease from 1986 until his death in December 2024.
“My grandfather desperately wanted to outlive Guinea worm, and he came remarkably close to doing it,” said Jason Carter, Carter Center board chair and the eldest grandson of President Carter and the late First Lady Rosalynn Carter.” He witnessed firsthand what freeing a community from this terrible disease meant to people’s daily lives, and The Carter Center will keep working until there are zero cases.”
“The President and the Dragon,” directed by Waleed Eltayeb and Ian D. Murphy, tells how President Carter and an eclectic group of public health professionals, local volunteers, and ex-child soldiers braved treacherous terrain and armed conflicts to reduce Guinea worm cases from 3.5 million annually in 1986 to just 15 last year.
The film is produced by Touchline’s Shaun McGuckian and Eltayeb, co-produced by Brave Road’s Andrew Bishop (ESPN’s “26.2 to Life”) and Tim Byron Owen (“The Matchstick Man”), and distributed worldwide by Buffalo 8.
About the Guinea Worm Disease
Guinea worm disease (dracunculiasis) is a parasitic infection contracted when people consume water from stagnant sources contaminated with Guinea worm larvae.
Inside a human’s abdomen, Guinea worm larvae mate and female worms mature and grow. After about a year of incubation, the female Guinea worm, one meter long, creates an agonizingly painful lesion on the skin and slowly emerges from the body. Guinea worm sufferers may try to seek relief from the burning sensation caused by the emerging worm and immerse their limbs in water sources, but this contact with water stimulates the emerging worm to release its larvae into the water and begin the cycle of infection all over again.
Guinea worm is a particularly devastating disease that incapacitates people for extended periods of time, making them unable to care for themselves, work, grow food for their families, or attend school.
The Carter Center and its partners have nearly defeated Guinea worm disease — reducing it by 99.99% since we took on the fight — by educating and empowering communities around the world to stop its spread at the source. It’s poised to become the second disease ever eradicated, and the first conquered without the use of vaccines or medicine.
Courtesy: The Carter Center.
In Partnership
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