Content provided in partnership with

Health Care Industry

Fred Soper and the Global Malaria Eradication Programme

Journal of Public Health Policy, 2002 by Gladwell, Malcolm

<< Page 1 Continued from page 4. Previous | Next

In March, 1930, a Rockefeller Foundation entomologist named Raymond Shannon was walking across tidal flats to the Potengi River, in Natal, Brazil, when he noticed, to his astonishment, two thousand gambiae larvae in a pool of water, thousands of miles from their homeland. Less than a kilometre away was a port where French destroyers brought mail across the Atlantic from Africa, and Shannon guessed that the mosquito larvae had come over, fairly recently, aboard one of the mail ships. He notified Soper, who was his boss, and Soper told Brazilian officials to open the dykes damming the tidal flats, because salt water from the ocean would destroy the gambiae breeding spots. The government refused. Over the next few years, there were a number of small yet worrisome outbreaks of malaria, followed by a few years of drought, which kept the problem in check. Then, in 1938, the worst malaria epidemic in the history of the Americas broke out. Gambiae had spread a hundred and fifty miles along the coast and inland, infecting a hundred thousand people and killing as many as twenty thousand. Soper was called in. This was several years before the arrival of DDT, so he brought with him the only tools malariologists had in those years: diesel oil and an arsenic-based mixture called Paris green, both of which were spread on the pools of water where gambiae larvae bred; and pyrethrum, a natural pesticide made from a variety of chrysanthemum, which was used to fumigate buildings. Four thousand men were put at his disposal. He drew maps and divided up his troops. The men wore uniforms, and carried flags to mark where they were working, and they left detailed written records of their actions, to be reviewed later by supervisors. When Soper discovered twelve gambiae in a car leaving an infected area, he set up thirty de-insectization posts along the roads, spraying the interiors of cars and trucks; seven more posts on the rail lines; and defumigation posts at the ports and airports. In Soper's personal notes, now housed at the National Library of Medicine, in Bethesda, there is a cue card, on which is typed a quotation from a veteran of the Rockefeller Foundation's efforts, in the early twentieth century, to eradicate hookworm. "Experience proved that the best way to popularize a movement so foreign to the customs of the people . . . was to prosecute it as though it were the only thing in the universe left undone." It is not hard to imagine the card tacked above Soper's desk in Rio for inspiration: his goal was not merely to cripple the population of gambiae, since that would simply mean that they would return, to kill again. His goal was to eliminate gambiae from every inch of the region of Brazil that they had colonized-an area covering some eighteen thousand square miles. It was an impossible task. Soper did it in twenty-two months.

Most Popular Articles in Health: Fuel your workout: exercisers who eat before they work out have more energy ...; Soothe a dry, itchy scalp: 5 easy expert solutions; Cocktails and calories: Beer, wine and liquor calories can really add up. ...; The sour truth about apple cider vinegar - evaluation of therapeutic use; The, six best supplements you've never heard of: these secret weapons can ...; More »

While DDT was being tested in Orlando, Soper was in North Africa with the United States Typhus Commission, charged with preventing the kind of louse-spread typhus epidemics that were so devastating during the First World War. His tool of choice was a delousing powder called MYL. Lice live in the folds of clothing, and a previous technique had been to treat the clothing after people had disrobed. But that was clearly not feasible in Muslim cities like Cairo and Algiers, nor was it practical for large-scale use. So Soper devised a new technique. He had people tie their garments at the ankles and wrists, and then he put the powder inside a dust gun, of the sort used in gardening, and blew it down the collar, creating a balloon effect. "We were in Algiers, waiting for Patton to get through Sicily," Thomas Aitken, an entomologist who worked with Soper in those years, remembers. "We were dusting people out in the countryside. This particular day, a little old Arab man, only about so high, came along with his donkey and stopped to talk to us. We told him what we were doing, and we dusted him. The next day, he comes by again and says that that had been the first time in his life that he had ever been able to sleep through the night."

Health Care Industry

Fred Soper and the Global Malaria Eradication Programme

Journal of Public Health Policy, 2002 by Gladwell, Malcolm

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: Health

Most Popular Articles in Health

Most Popular Publications in Health