Abstract

JUAREZ, Jaime. Paradigms of the malarial control in Guatemala in the 20th and 21^st centuries moving from eradication to elimination. Rev Cubana Salud Pública [online]. 2013, vol.39, n.2, pp. 346-353. ISSN 0864-3466.

Malaria remains a world health problem. During the 20^th and 21^st centuries, the approach to this disease underwent very interesting paradigmatic changes, but they were influenced by breakthroughs derived from the Second World Wear, the international economic situations, the advent of new monitoring strategies and the approach to the disease based on the community and the health sector involvement. The objective of this paper was to present changes in paradigms form a vertical perspective or eradication to a horizontal viewpoint or elimination, and from a quantitative positivist to a combined standpoint in addressing malaria in Guatemala. A historical account of malaria was made and the bioethical aspects of the use of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane worldwide were discussed. The eradicating interventions by using the insecticidal spraying of houses were backed up in the developed countries. This was supplemented with the diagnosis and treatment of malaria. However, the situation was different in most of the developing countries, since their financial restrictions did not make possible to keep the eradication programs, being a clear example of the global inequality. In the present decade, Guatemala is going through the pre-elimination-elimination phase and it works with good results, which is indicative of a change in paradigm and shows that actions against malaria should be horizontal in order to encourage the intrasectorial and the intersectorial work.

Keywords : paradigms; malaria; eradication; elimination; dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT).

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