The Trouble with Malaria in Africa

The President's Malaria Initiative, the Global Fund, and the Gates Foundation are currently funding an ambitious program of malaria reduction with a long-term goal of eradicating the disease in Africa. In the 1950s and 1960s, the World Health Organization, as part of its malaria eradication program (1955-1969), undertook a series of pilot projects to develop protocols to eradicate malaria in tropical Africa. The projects encountered a spate of difficulties that were unable to be surmounted.

What can the study of antimalaria campaigns in the past tell us about the present? In what ways has the malaria problem itself changed over time? In what ways can the fields of historical epidemiology and global health history improve the practice of public health?