Learn to think like an Influencer. Watch as Dr. Donald Hopkins discusses how he is influencing behavior to eradicate one of Africa's most noxious parasites, the Guinea worm.
Imagine it's your job to fight a disease that has plagued humankind for over 3,000 years. A disease that has the ability to ruin lives, deepen poverty, and to incapacitate entire villages. More than 3.5 million people in Asia in Africa alone are infected. And there is no cure.
Meet The Carter Center's Dr. Donald Hopkins, one of the influence masters we studied in our research for the book, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. For the past 20 years, Dr. Hopkins' has waged a war against the Guinea worm -- the world's largest and most noxious human parasite.
"Guinea worm disease is parasitic infection. That in years past, affected up to 20, 40, 60 or more percent of a village's population at the same time. It involves 3-foot long worms that people get by drinking microscopic forms of the worms in open sources of drinking water that have been contaminated, such as open ponds for example. A year later, these 3-feet-long worms, about the width of a thin strand of spaghetti, emerge through the skin on any part of the body, very slowly. An individual worm incapacitates an individual for periods averaging two to three months. People may have more than one worm. This infection then will keep people from being able to farm, keep children from being able to walk to school, keep parents from being able to run after their toddlers. And depending on where this worm might come out, it might kill you!"
The only weapon Dr. Hopkins has in the battle against the Guinea worm is his ability to influence others to change how they behave.
"Some people said, before you do this, they said you don't have a vaccine. You don't have treatment. This is behavioral change and you're not going to get people change behavior in any reasonable period of time. . ."
But Dr. Hopkins has been able to do just that. By influencing others to be able to change their behavior, he and his team have eradicated the disease in more than half of the previously suffering countries.
"When The Carter Center began working on this problem in 1986, there were an estimated 3.5 million people infected in the world, entirely in Asia and Africa. As of 2005, we're down to just over 10,000 cases remaining and 11 of the 20 countries have already broken transmission."
Dr. Hopkins and his team have reduced the number of new cases by 99.7 percent and are on track to completely wipe out the disease by 2009.
Dr. Donald Hopkins is an Influencer are you?
