The Making of a Tropical Disease

A global history of malaria that traces the natural and social forces that have shaped its spread and made it deadly, while limiting efforts to eliminate it.

Malaria sickens hundreds of millions of people¿and kills nearly a half a 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 malaria disappear from other regions, and why does it persist in the tropics?

From Russia to Bengal to Palm Beach, Randall M. Packard''s far-ranging narrative shows how the history of malaria has been driven by the interplay of social, biological, economic, and environmental forces. The shifting alignment of these forces has largely determined the social and geographical distribution of the disease, including its initial global expansion, its subsequent retreat to the tropics, and its current persistence. Packard argues that effor