From autonomy to partial alignment: national malaria programs in the time of global eradication, Brazil, 1941-1961

This article analyses the Brazilian experience in the battle against malaria from 1941, when the Serviço Nacional de Malaria (National Malaria Service) was created and a large-scale national program for malaria control begun, until the end of the Kubitscheck administration (1956-61) when Brazil joined the Global Malaria Eradication Program (MEP), led by the World Health Organization (WHO). We will discuss the relationship between the national program, aimed at controlling--and, in short order, eliminating--malaria using Brazilian strategies and methods and the international health organization's exclusively eradication-based program. Of particular importance is the role played by malariologist Mário Pinotti, who developed a special method for malaria control in the Amazon region, based on chloroquinated cooking salt, and who wielded tremendous political influence upon Brazil's public health path during the 1940s and 1950s. The article also highlights the implications of changes in Brazilian-US relations during the Kubitscheck term for Brazil's adoption of a malaria eradication program according to the WHO model.