The fight against malaria in Sardinia at the turn of the 20th Century: a lesson for the present

This article seeks to estimate the health burden of malaria in Sardinia between the last decades of the 19th Century and the first decades of the 20th Century, emphasizing the distinctive features of the disease in the island. The analysis illustrates the exceptional significance of malaria experience in Sardinia, due to the extremely high death risks among children caused by the epidemiological and seasonal characteristics of the disease. The authors also aim to analyse the effectiveness of the quinine campaign, which allowed a gradual reduction of mortality, without definitively defeating the disease. The partial failure of the health campaign was mainly due to the extreme poverty of the population, its low literacy, and the scarcity of health-infrastructures in the more rural and remote areas of the island. The article provides an analysis, as complete as possible based on the available documentation, of the demographic impact of malaria in the Sardinian health transition and offers, at the same time, a lesson for the current challenges in the poorest countries, showing that to defeat the disease it is essential to combat its social determinants.