Editing History of medicine (section)

==== Malaria eradication ====
{{main|History of malaria}}

Starting in World War II, [[DDT]] was used as insecticide to combat [[insect vector]]s carrying [[malaria]], which was endemic in most tropical regions of the world.<ref>{{cite book |title=Humanity's Burden: A Global History of Malaria |vauthors=Webb Jr LA |date=2009 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-67012-8 |location=Cambridge}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria |vauthors=Packard RM |date=2021 |isbn=978-1-4214-4179-5 |edition=Second |series=Johns Hopkins Biographies of Disease |location=Baltimore}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=War and Disease: Biomedical Research on Malaria in the Twentieth Century |vauthors=Slater LB |date=2009 |publisher=Rutgers University Press |isbn=978-0-8135-4438-0 |series=Critical Issues in Health and Medicine |location=New Brunswick, N.J.}}</ref> The first goal was to protect soldiers, but it was widely adopted as a public health device. In Liberia, for example, the United States had large military operations during the war and the U.S. Public Health Service began the use of DDT for indoor residual spraying (IRS) and as a larvicide, with the goal of controlling malaria in Monrovia, the Liberian capital. In the early 1950s, the project was expanded to nearby villages. In 1953, the [[World Health Organization]] (WHO) launched an antimalaria program in parts of Liberia as a pilot project to determine the feasibility of malaria eradication in tropical Africa. However these projects encountered a spate of difficulties that foreshadowed the general retreat from malaria eradication efforts across tropical Africa by the mid-1960s.<ref name="Webb_2011">{{cite journal | vauthors = Webb JL | title = The first large-scale use of synthetic insecticide for malaria control in tropical Africa: lessons from Liberia, 1945–1962 | journal = Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences | volume = 66 | issue = 3 | pages = 347–76 |id={{Project MUSE|445524}} | date = July 2011 | pmid = 20624820 | doi = 10.1093/jhmas/jrq046 }}</ref>