Abstract
In May 1955, the Eighth World Health Assembly decided that the World Health Organization (WHO) “should take the initiative, provide technical advice, and encourage research and co-ordination of resources in the implementation of a program having as its ultimate objective the world-wide eradication of malaria”.1 In the following 14 years, WHO would “wage an all-out campaign against one of mankind’s worst scourges”2 — at a time when well over one billion people were at risk of being exposed to malaria, and an estimated 300 million cases occurred annually, resulting in roughly 3 million deaths.3 The strategy of the global Malaria Eradication Program (MEP) was to conduct extensive sprayings of residual insecticides — especially DDT — that were to cover every single building in malarious areas, usually twice a year for a period of three to five years. Thereby, malaria transmission through mosquitoes would be interrupted. With the vector temporarily gone, all those who were already infected had to be found and treated so that transmission would not re-start with the expected return of the mosquitoes. In its scope and ambition the global MEP was unprecedented in the history of international cooperation in public health and was to remain the largest undertaking in the realm of international health politics. In 1956, WHO assisted 34 countries in their eradication efforts; in 1959, programs were in operation in 61 countries, most of which received direct assistance.
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© 2014 Thomas Zimmer
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Zimmer, T. (2014). In the Name of World Health and Development: The World Health Organization and Malaria Eradication in India, 1949–1970. In: Frey, M., Kunkel, S., Unger, C.R. (eds) International Organizations and Development, 1945–1990. The Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137437549_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137437549_6
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