The quantification of malaria transmission for the classification of malaria risk has long been a concern for epidemiologists. During the era of the Global Malaria Eradication Programme, measurements of malaria endemicity were institutionalised by their incorporation into rules outlining defined action points for malaria control programmes. We review the historical development of these indices ...

During 1946-1950, the Rockefeller Foundation conducted a large-scale experiment in Sardinia to test the feasibility of indigenous vector species eradication. The interruption of malaria transmission did not require vector eradication, but with a goal of developing a new strategy to fight malaria, the choice was made to wage a rapid attack with a powerful new chemical. Costing millions of dollar...

The global agenda for malaria has, once again, embraced the possibility of eradication. As history has shown, there will be no single magic bullet that can be applied to every epidemiological setting. Africa has a diverse malaria ecology, lending itself to some of the highest disease burden areas of the world and a wide range of clinical epidemiological patterns making control with our current ...

Completion of the Panama Canal in 1914 marked the beginning of an era of vector control that achieved conspicuous success against malaria. In 1955 the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted the controversial Global Eradication Campaign emphasising DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) spraying in homes. The incidence of malaria fell sharply where the programme was implemented, but the strategy...

The malaria eradication campaign in Iran, which started in 1958, has not been able to achieve its final goals. The technical, administrative, socio-economic and financial obstacles involved in this unfinished task are mentioned and the present status of malaria in the country is discussed. It is urged that eradication policy, presently used, be substituted by malaria control program, as defined...

This review of Professor Marcos Cueto's Cold War Deadly Fevers: Malaria Eradication in Mexico, 1955–1975 discusses some of the historical, sociological, political and parasitological topics included in Dr. Cueto's superbly well-informed volume. The reviewer, a parasitologist, follows the trail illuminated by Dr. Cueto through the foundations of the malaria eradication campaign; the release in M...