How Has Malaria Been Tackled in the Past

How has Malaria been tackled in the past?

When malaria was first discovered it was widespread, treatment however was very limited. The first recorded treatment was in the 1600’s, when the bark of the Cinchona tree in Peru was used by the natives. By 1649, the bark was available in England, as Jesuits powder, so that those suffering from malaria might benefit from the chemical substance quinine, which it contained. Not until 1889 was the protozoal (single celled parasite) cause of malaria discovered by Alphonse Laveran working in Algeria, and only in 1897 was the Anopheles mosquito demonstrated to be the means of transmission for the disease by Ronald Ross.

The discovery of the insecticide DDT in 1942, by Paul Müller the Nobel Prize Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1948, and its first use in Italy in 1944, made the idea of global eradication of malaria seem possible. Subsequently, widespread systematic control measures such as spraying with DDT, coating marshes with paraffin (to kill Anopheles mosquito larvae), draining stagnant water, and the widespread use of nets and cheap, effective drugs such as chloroquine were implemented, with impressive results. Despite initial success, there was a complete failure to eradicate malaria in many countries due to a number of factors.

Once it was realised that malaria mosquitoes could not be eradicated completely it was decided that prevention was the better option. This started with campaigns such as the one created by Disney, informing people on how to reduce their chances of getting the disease. This included procedures such as setting up mosquito nets, putting screens over windows and burying or filling in anything that could hols stagnant water.

This campaign had great success and malaria was eliminated from the vast majority of developed countries, however this was not possible in other places. In Spain and Panama a campaign was launched to try and eradicate the mosquitoes, but however encountered great...