A continuing crisis in
global health?:
Malaria Control, Elimination and Eradication
Programmes in Historical Perspective
Sanjoy Bhattacharya
The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL
Malaria control efforts during the
Second World War
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World’s largest stocks of quinine in the
Dutch East Indies were lost to Japanese
forces
Sparked a range of researchers into new
anti-malarial drugs as well as antimosquito measures.
The military significance of these
researches ensured a high level of
government funding.
Led to a variety of new discoveries that
were actually put into use.
Discovery and use of synthetic antimalarials like atabrine & mepacrine.
Unfortunate side-effects limited their use
somewhat
Robert Jay’s article ‘Malaria in American
Troops in the South and Southwest
Pacific in World War II’, (Medical History,
43, 2, 1999) - turned regular users’ skin
yellow.
DDT
• Wartime researches
produced insecticides like
DDT.
• Used effectively by the
Allied armies near their
bases.
• Selective usage – ‘priority
classes’.
• Mark Harrison – A basis for
the superiority of British and
American armies over
Japanese military
formations.
The ‘Cold War’ and the malaria
eradication programme (MEP)
• DDT – Continues to be an
important element of the postWorld War 2 story.
• Another conflict, long-lasting in
nature, broke out: the so-called
‘Cold War’.
• DDT allowed the WHO to
announce the launch of the
Malaria Eradication Programme
(Randall Packard and Socrates
Litsios)
• MEP deeply influenced by Cold
War rivalries and calculations.
• Fear of civil war, caused by the
demobilisation of huge armies –
MEP provided useful avenues of
employment for demobilised
soldiers.
Militaristic nature of MEP & successor
programmes
• Historians have pointed out
that the MEP had a militaristic
profile.
• Military metaphors were widely
used
• Militaristic modes of
programme organisation.
• Military/strategic
considerations played an
important part.
• Winning wars with healthy
soldiers.
• MEP-related aid as a means of
winning geo-political support.
And finally….
• Search for new anti-malarial
drugs.
• Trials with artemisinin
continue (for example, South
East Asia).
• Search for a malaria vaccine.
• ‘Roll Back Malaria’
programme
• The need for a new global
malaria eradication
programme?
• Based on technological
fixes? Holistic science?
• ‘Adaptive verticality’?