THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2024 27 1958 Combating Malaria in Ethiopia with USAID Dr. Julius Prince pioneered international programs to train local health workers as head of the Public Health Division in the Ethiopia Mission of what would soon be known as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). With malaria killing thousands each week, Dr. Prince recounts how the mission supported the Ministry of Health’s efforts to rapidly respond to the epidemic. I had been interested in international health problems. … I was completely “converted” to the belief that we are not … “an island.” And similarly, I believed that we have to be concerned about the health of people in other countries, because everything is related to everything else. So that is the philosophical reason why I wanted to do this kind of work. The minute I got off the airplane in Addis Ababa my staff was there and said: “Dr. Prince, come on, we’ve got to get to work with the ministry. Ethiopia is in the grip of a terrible malaria epidemic.” And never having had any experience with malaria epidemics, I was astonished. The reasons why such things apparently … exist are … the epidemic’s likely relationship to the peculiar ecology of the country and lack of malaria immunity among the relatively high-altitude inhabitants, who were usually not exposed to the disease. Basically, it had to do with the altitude and meteorological conditions necessary for mosquitoes to breed under certain conditions. But in 1958 things were just right, we suspected, in terms of temperature, humidity, rainfall, and the like, for mosquitoes to breed in locations even well above 5,000-foot altitude. Well, we went directly to the Ministry of Health that morning and joined the planning already underway. And the only thing to do was rapidly to get as much chloroquine tablet medication as possible into the country and distribute it for emergency treatment of all individuals found to be febrile as widely as one could over the affected areas and also do that as rapidly as possible; ASSOCIATED PRESS Mother Teresa, head of the Missionaries of Charity order, cradles an armless baby girl at her order’s orphanage in what was then known as Calcutta, India, in 1978. it was a bazaar participated in basically by Indians. We had silly games of chance, we had dancing, we had people who sang and people who ran booths of entertainment so that there was something for everybody to do, and of course food. I was in charge. I was the head of the [American Women’s] club, and there was a group of us who kind of fought our way through. There were those who thought we should not support Mother Teresa, because she was not Hindu. Anyway, it was argued out, and we decided to do it, because it was Hindus, Moslems, anybody who was dying and in terrible shape, leprosy and cholera and typhoid and tuberculosis patients that she was ministering to day by day and running little schools of sorts for their children. … She had been teaching in a sophisticated school for Indian girls in Calcutta. She decided she had to leave that way of life and devote herself to those who were totally poverty-stricken and totally helpless and hopeless. She could at least give them love and hope, and it was a pretty emotional thing to go around and see what she was doing and accomplishing with just plain nothing. … They had a very simple house, minimal rooms, minimal equipment, just running water. I think they had electricity, but nothing elaborate whatsoever. But it was organized, and she had six or seven nuns working with her in 1952. All the reports describe her as having begun her mission in 1952, so we were really in there on the ground floor. She could at least give them love and hope, and it was a pretty emotional thing to go around and see what she was doing and accomplishing with just plain nothing. —Leila Wilson We have to be concerned about the health of people in other countries, because everything is related to everything else. —Dr. Julius Prince
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