Global Malaria Eradication Programme

A World Health Organization campaign launched in 1955 to eliminate malaria worldwide through mass residual spraying of DDT against mosquito vectors, combined with case surveillance and treatment. It deliberately excluded most of sub-Saharan Africa, where transmission was judged too intense for the technology of the time. The programme eliminated malaria across Europe, the United States, the Caribbean and large parts of Asia and South America by the late 1960s, but insecticide resistance, weak health infrastructure and the sheer intensity of transmission in tropical regions stalled progress elsewhere. The World Health Assembly formally abandoned global eradication in favor of malaria control in 1969, a pivot that shaped international malaria policy for decades afterward.