War Highlights Malaria in the U.S.
Historically, disease has been a major mortality factor in wars. During the U.S. Civil War, tens of thousands of soldiers died from diseases like typhoid, pneumonia, measles and malaria. Scholars have also estimated that during World War I, more soldiers died from influenza than combat.
Disease control was a huge concern for the United States when it entered World War II. To prevent deaths from bacterial infections, the country mobilized to produce doses of penicillin. To avoid the kind of flu pandemic seen during World War I, the United States funded research into the world’s first flu vaccines. In addition, the country developed programs to combat malaria, a deadly disease caused by parasites and spread via the Anopheles mosquito.
“These efforts during the war were actually quite successful on a number of fronts,” says Leo B. Slater, a former historian at the National Science Foundation and author of War and Disease: Biomedical Research on Malaria in the Twentieth Century. “World War II was the first major conflict that the country engaged in where casualties caused by disease were lower than casualties caused by combat.”
Captain Theodor Seuss Geisel’s “blood-thirsty Ann” booklet was part of the U.S. Army’s malaria response. The booklet educated soldiers about malaria and how to avoid mosquito bites using bed netting and insect repellant. In addition to the Army’s efforts, the U.S. Public Health Service opened the Office of Malaria Control in War Areas—the predecessor to the CDC.
The Office of Malaria Control in War Areas opened in 1942 in Atlanta, Georgia. This new office focused on draining and destroying mosquito breeding sites and spraying insecticide, as well as teaching state and local health departments how to use these methods. Around 1943 it began applying a newer insecticide called DDT in people’s homes to keep them mosquito-free (in 1972, the U.S. banned DDT because of its long-term effects on the environment).
Focus Broadens to Become CDC After War
Like many wartime offices, the Office of Malaria Control in War Areas was set to close down when World War II ended. However, a physician named Joseph Mountin stepped in to expand the office into a center that focused on multiple diseases.
Mountin, who worked for the Bureau of State Services within the Public Health Service at the time, “decided that MCWA should do more than just malaria,” says Judy Gannt, director of the David J. Sencer CDC Museum in Atlanta. “And so in 1946, it became the Communicable Disease Center.”