Confronting the Malaria Threat
Bate Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Africa on Malaria and TB in Africa
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Ninety years ago, a Congressional Committee held a hearing on malaria, but its focus was slightly different. It concentrated on combating malaria in the United States.
As late as 1940 at least a million people in the United States experienced the body shaking chills, fevers, and sweats of malaria. However, using federal and private funding, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the United States Public Health Service enacted comprehensive programs to counter the conditions under which malaria flourished in the U.S. Through a combination of treating infected people with effective drugs, larviciding areas where mosquitoes bred, and spraying the outdoors and the interiors of houses with the insecticide DDT, these groups managed to eradicate malaria from the United States by the early 1950s.