National Malaria Eradication Program

In the United States, the National Malaria Eradication Program (NMEP) was launched on 1 July 1947. This federal program — with state and local participation — had succeeded in eradicating malaria in the United States by 1951.

History

Prior to the establishment of the NMEP, malaria had been endemic across much of the United States. By the 1930s, it had become concentrated in 13 southeastern states. (For example, in the Tennessee River Valley it had a prevalence of about 30% in 1933.)

A national malaria eradication effort was originally proposed by Louis Laval Williams. The NMEP was directed by the federal Communicable Disease Center (now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC) created in 1946 and based in Atlanta, Georgia. It was a cooperative undertaking by federal, state and local health agencies. The Program had evolved from the Office of Malaria Control in War Areas, which had been created in 1942 to suppress malaria near military bases in the United States during World War II. The CDC’s first director – Justin M. Andrews -- was also Georgia’s chief malariologist.