In 1951, the criteria for eradication as put forth by the National Malaria Society was: “Malaria may be assumed to be no longer endemic in any given area when no primary indigenous case has occurred there for three years.” Since then, the definition has evolved a bit. The term “elimination” is used when malaria transmission is no longer occurring in a specific geographic area. “Eradication” is used to describe elimination of malaria transmission worldwide.

CDC’s predecessor, the Office of Malaria Control in War Areas, had been established in 1942 to limit the impact of malaria and other vector-borne diseases (such as murine typhus) during World War II around military training bases in the southern United States and its territories, where malaria was still problematic. The center was located in Atlanta (rather than Washington, DC) because the South was the area of the country with the most malaria transmission.