Foul Water and Fiery Serpent, Film Screening & Panel Discussion, Sept. 29
Boston University’s Center for Global Health and Development, and the Department of International Health are co-sponsoring the screening “Foul Water and Fiery Serpent” a new documentary following community health workers in Ghana and Sudan through the eradication of the disabling Guinea worm parasite.
The film features former President Jimmy Carter and The Carter Center and is narrated by Golden Globe winner Sigourney Weaver.
- Thursday, September 29
- 12:30-2:30 p.m.
- Keefer Auditorium, Evans Building, BUMC
- http://www.foulwaterfieryserpent.com
Guinea worm is the first parasitic disease eradicated without a vaccine or drug. The program, led by Dr. Donald Hopkins, represents a public health intervention based on behavior change, education and innovation. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with:
Dr. Donald Hopkins
Dr. Hopkins directs all of the health programs of The Carter Center. He first joined the Center in 1987 as the senior consultant for the health programs where he led the Center’s efforts to eradicate Guinea worm disease and river blindness worldwide. Dr. Hopkins’s professional experience includes serving as deputy director (1984-1987) and acting director (1985) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He was an assistant professor of tropical public health at Harvard School of Public Health, and he directed the Smallpox Eradication/Measles Control Program in Sierra Leone, West Africa.
Gary Strieker
Gary Strieker is executive director and senior producer for Cielo Productions, Inc., a non-profit company producing news reports on global public health issues for U.S. and international broadcasters. Until January 2004, Strieker was CNN’s global environmental correspondent, based in Atlanta. On an assignment unique in television journalism, Strieker traveled the globe reporting on the planet’s environmental health. Airing regularly on CNN and CNNI, his reports focused mainly on endangered species and threatened habitats, especially in developing nations facing critical choices between exploitation and conservation of natural resources. Before becoming a journalist, he was a resident vice president of Citibank in the Africa regional office in Nairobi. Before that, he spent five years as an international legal adviser to the government of Swaziland. He first came to Africa as a volunteer lawyer with the U.S. Peace Corps.
Paul Chen
Paul Chen is the Regional Director, c.s. North America for Vestergaard Frandsen, a leading innovator of emergency response and disease-control textiles.
Doug Tuttle
Doug Tuttle is the recently returned Guinea worm TA (technical assistant a.k.a. field worker)