The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria » (1st Edition)

Randall M. Packard is director of the Institute for the History of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University. He is the coeditor of Emerging Illnesses and Society: Negotiating the Public Health Agenda, also published by Johns Hopkins.

Malaria sickens hundreds of millions of people — and kills one to three million — each year. Despite massive efforts to eradicate the disease, it remains a major public health problem in poorer tropical regions. But malaria has not always been concentrated in tropical areas. How did other regions control malaria and why does the disease still flourish in some parts of the globe?

From Russia to Bengal to Palm Beach, Randall Packard's far-ranging narrative traces the natural and social forces that help malaria spread and make it deadly. He finds that war, land development, crumbling health systems, and globalization — coupled with climate change and changes in the distribution and flow of water — create conditions in which malaria's carrier mosquitoes thrive. The combination of these forces, Packard contends, makes the tropical regions today a perfect home for the disease.

Authoritative, fascinating, and eye-opening, this short history of malaria concludes with policy recommendations for improving control strategies and saving lives.

Foreword   Charles E. Rosenberg     vii
Preface: Mulanda     xi
Introduction: Constructing a Global Narrative     1
Beginnings     19
Malaria Moves North     36
A Southern Disease     67
Tropical Development and Malaria     84
The Making of a Vector-Borne Disease     111
Malaria Dreams     150
Malaria Realities     177
Rolling Back Malaria: The Future of a Tropical Disease?     217
Conclusion: Ecology and Policy     247
Acknowledgments     253
Notes     257
Index     291