Monday Musings: Malaria & the Story Behind CDC
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention going full circle?
Late last month, we began reading news reports about a few people in the U.S. contracting malaria, a parasitic disease spread by infected mosquitoes. It’s not unusual for some Americans to get the disease if they travel to countries where malaria is endemic. About 2,000 cases were diagnosed each year in the U.S. before the COVID-19 pandemic began and international travel slowed. But the U.S. cases recently reported were locally acquired, occurring among people who didn’t travel and had no connection to areas of the world where malaria is common.
It may be surprising to hear about home-grown malaria, so to speak, but how many people know that there once was a malaria problem so bad in the U.S. that it is the reason CDC – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – exists now?
Visiting the CDC campus in Atlanta
Earlier this year, I was awarded an AHCJ-CDC fellowship. The Association of Health Care Journalists selected eight journalists for the opportunity to spend three days in Atlanta at CDC. There, we met experts in many fields and toured different areas on two campuses. One area we explored was the CDC museum, where I learned about how the agency came to be and its connection to malaria.
Malaria was common in the U.S. in the early 1900s. During World War II, the U.S. government established the Office of Malaria Control in War Area to address the impact of the disease on the southeastern section of the U.S. On July 1, 1946, the government created the Communicable Disease Center, the original CDC, in Atlanta, GA, because that region was experiencing the highest number of malaria infections in the country.
When public health pioneer Dr. Joseph W. Mountain founded the center, it was a one-floor building on Peachtree Street with only a few hundred employees dedicated to fighting malaria. Now called Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it employs over 14,000 people in 54 countries and in 170 occupations. Its mission is “to protect America from health, safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S. Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are chronic or acute, curable or preventable, human error or deliberate attack, CDC fights disease and supports communities and citizens to do the same.”
How did CDC eliminate malaria?
To get rid of malaria, the mosquitoes that spread the disease had to be eliminated. Partner agencies in the southeastern states helped support a program to drain and remove mosquito breeding sites, and spray the insecticide DDT, targeting more than 4,650,000 homes. While malaria wasn’t eradicated yet at that point, CDC said the infection was no longer a “significant health problem” by 1949. In 1951, the U.S. was considered malaria-free. The agency still maintained active malaria programs, however, to assist other countries and to watch for any re-emergence at home.
On to solving other problems
The success in decreasing malaria’s impact on the U.S. population allowed CDC to turn its focus to other health issues, including public health. It established an epidemiology branch that allowed scientists to study how often diseases occur in groups of people and what might cause them. A new threat also was on the horizon: biological warfare, which led to even more departments and expertise. The agency needed more space and Emory University donated it. To this day, one of CDC’s campuses is next door to Emory.
More health crises occurred that CDC had to address, including the emergency of polio and tuberculosis.
Venereal diseases were also a big problem, as were other infectious diseases but, arguably, one of the CDC’s biggest and most impactful successes in public health was the eradication of smallpox. According to CDC’s publications, “In 1962 it established a smallpox surveillance unit, and a year later tested a newly developed jet gun and vaccine in the Pacific island nation of Tonga. After refining vaccination techniques in Brazil, CDC began work in Central and West Africa in 1966. When millions of people there had been vaccinated, CDC used surveillance to speed the work along. The World Health Organization used this "eradication escalation" technique elsewhere with such success that global eradication of smallpox was achieved by 1977.”
To date, smallpox is the only infectious disease that has been eradicated from the world.
CDC today
I wrote a short piece about what CDC does today over at Decipher Your Health. The agency has thousands of pages of information on its site (CDC.gov) that address not just the headline-worthy news like new, locally acquired malaria infections, but everyday concerns, such as summer safety, dealing with natural disasters – and something that is of particular concern these days, wildfire smoke exposure. Their work covers so much that it’s impossible to put it all in one article or blog post. You can, though, keep up to date about the latest news from the CDC Health Alert Network here.
This Monday Musings issue was produced with support from the Association of Health Care Journalists.
Excellent article. Learned so much I didn’t know.