Men in Green

Along the malarial marshes and through the tropical lowland jungle ride Venezuela's green-uniformed soldiers of health. From their gaudy yellow trucks they dismount at the doorways of palm-thatched huts to spray walls and dark corners with DDT-guns. In two years of spraying, the malaria fighters have cleared the mosquito from 200,000 houses and all but wiped out malaria in one-third of the nation.

The campaign got started almost by chance. In the spring of 1945, Venezuela's chief malaria expert, young Arnoldo Gabaldon, was in Washington for a Pan-American health conference. At lunch one day, Dr. James Stevens (now dean of the Harvard School of Public Health) told him what DDT was doing for the Army in the southwest Pacific. Gabaldon was "terribly excited."

Back in Venezuela, Gabaldon reviewed his problem. Half of his countrymen suffered from malaria at one time or another. It broke the spirit as well as the body. "People with malaria just don't care," says Gabaldon. "They don't even care if you treat them." As a Rockefeller Foundation fellow in protozoology, Gabaldon had learned that the chronic malarial "lose even the desire to procreate." Gabaldon decided to go all out for DDT.

Maracay, a malaria-ridden coffee town, was made the proving ground. DDT squads were recruited, and a fine, white-stone laboratory, office and warehouse were built. Some 100,000 children were examined and more than three million home visits were made. In time Maracay was declared malaria-free and the area of treatment was expanded.

Last week, in the musty halls of Caracas' Central University, 39-year-old Arnoldo Gabaldon rose to receive a nation's thanks. Flanked by six cabinet ministers, Gabaldon told of what had been done. "We are now able to dominate this great plague of the nation," he said. "In all probability we will be the first tropical country to defeat the disease."

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