Malaria dreams: postwar visions of health and development in the Third World

In 1995 the World Health Assembly voted to launch a global program for the eradication of malaria. The program lasted fourteen years. Though it was successful in a number of countries, eradication failed in most of the developing world. Studies that have examined the failure of malaria eradication have focused on the various technical, organizational, and financial problems which hampered the program. While these critiques are valid, they lose sight of the wider political, economic and cultural context within which eradication was conceived and executed. Malaria eradication was a product of a postwar vision of economic and social development and needs to be examined in this context. Many of the problems that plagued eradication efforts flowed from this intense association between eradication and "development".