Eradication of yellow fever in Havana (Gorgas)
Erradicación de la fiebre amarilla en La Habana (Gorgas)
- Date
- 1901 · confidence high
- Place
- Havana, Cuba
- Credited to
- William C. Gorgas, US Army chief sanitary officer
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
In 1901 Gorgas applied in Havana a mosquito-control campaign with isolation of patients under nets, fumigation and removal of standing water. The city stopped registering yellow fever after almost two centuries of epidemics.
The last cases in the city were recorded around September 1901; there were occasional reintroductions later. Success is also credited to Cuban physicians, among them Finlay, who later became Cuba's chief health officer.
What it led to
- one of the first urban eradications of a disease by controlling its vector
- a method later applied in Panama and other tropical cities
- a model of urban sanitation in the tropics