Malaria Studies and Control in Brazil

Abstract

In the greater part of Brazil's extensive territory climatic conditions are propitious for the establishment of endemic malaria, which has been causing pain and death among the country's inhabitants for generations. In Brazil the epidemiology of malaria has presented some peculiar aspects: besides being transmitted in most areas by anophelines breeding in groundwater collections, its dissemination in a restricted but economically important zone was entirely due to mosquitoes breeding in water accumulated in plants of the family Bromeliaceae. It is the so called “bromeliad malaria.” To the native vector species, the alien Anopheles gambiae, introduced to the country, added a new problem. Considerable efforts have been made by Brazilians and foreigners to understand malaria epidemiology and control its transmission. Among the foreigners one immediately thinks of Fred Lowe Soper. Following his contribution to the elimination of Aedes aegypti and urban yellow fever in Brazil, Soper was one of those most directly responsible for the eradication of An. gambiae from this part of the world.