By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAYFormer president Jimmy Carter says he will never forget the "beautiful young woman" of about 20, living in a tiny village near Accra, Ghana, looking as though she were holding a baby to her breast.

What Carter thought was a baby was, instead, swelling from an agonizing disease known as Guinea worm, whose Latin name, dracunculiasis, means "afflicted with little dragons." As he watched, a worm emerged from the woman's nipple.

Carter learned that half the village's population was hobbled by the disease. The grotesque vision prompted him to expand the mission of his center, founded in 1982 to advance human rights, to public health. Nearly 25 years later, the Carter Center's success in pushing the parasite to the brink of extinction is one of several achievements that today prompted the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to grant the Carter Center this year's $1 million Gates Award for Global Health.

If the campaign succeeds, Guinea worm could beat polio to oblivion and become the second disease to be eradicated, after smallpox. An unflagging effort by volunteers trained by the Carter Center in 2,500 villages in 21 countries reduced the number of cases from 3.6 million in 1986 to fewer than 10,700 last year.

"Guinea worm's going to be our major achievement," Carter says. The center's health experts also have:

• Organized the International Task Force for Disease Eradication.

• Set up more than 4,000 community prevention programs for trachoma, a bacterial eye disease that afflicts 84 million people, blinding 8 million of them. Trachoma causes the eyelids to swell and turn inward, so the lashes scar the cornea. Health workers remove the lashes, sparing the eyes. In Ethiopia, the center helped build 250,000 latrines to deprive flies that spread trachoma of places to breed.

• Delivered 75 million doses of ivermectin, donated by Merck, to 11 countries in Africa and Latin America to combat river blindness, a parasitic disease spread by biting flies. About 18 million people suffer from the disease, mostly in Africa, and 270,000 are blind.

• Tackled other parasitic diseases, including filariasis and schistosomiasis.

"They've taken seriously diseases that had basically been ignored for all practical purposes and, in many places, actually eliminated them. It's such a wonderful example for the rest of us," says Gates foundation co-chair William Gates Sr.

Carter says he and former first lady Rosalind Carter have traveled in Africa with the elder Gates and his wife to acquaint them with AIDS, but the award was granted by an independent jury of experts assembled by the Global Health Council.

Emmanuel Miri, who runs Carter Center programs in Nigeria, says local volunteers in each community are the real heroes of the center's efforts. "This is something every family can take credit for."