DDT in Sardinia: The Campaign That Defeated Malaria 0 Commentaires

by Daniela Toti

There was a time when Sardinia was synonymous with malaria, Sa Malarika.

A time not so long ago, when fevers were part of everyday life, especially in rural areas and wetlands. 

Then, between 1946 and 1950, something changed radically.

It was then that the so-called “Sardinia Project” began, one of the largest public health campaigns ever carried out in Europe, led by the Rockefeller Foundation in collaboration with the UNRRA and the Italian government. The goal was not only to treat the disease, but to eliminate its cause: the mosquito Anopheles labranchiae.

To achieve this, a drastic path was chosen. DDT was sprayed everywhere: inside homes, across fields, in caves, and along waterways. Thousands of men, around 32,000, formed a true army of operators. In just a few years, hundreds of tons of insecticide covered the island.

The result was extraordinary: malaria almost completely disappeared.

Historian Frank Snowden, in his study of the history of medicine, recounts a surprising detail: the Sardinians, initially distrustful of state-provided treatments, instead welcomed the ERLAAS workers with openness. Only a few decades earlier, the distribution of quinine had been hindered by deep-rooted fears. In rural areas, people suspected that those medicines were actually poisons, part of a broader plan to “eliminate the poor.” Doctors were turned away, medicines rejected, sold, or even thrown to the ground.

When DDT arrived, however, something changed. Perhaps the desperation was greater. Perhaps the promise of a definitive solution was too strong to ignore. Or perhaps, quite simply, people were ready to trust.

The fact remains: the campaign worked. But the cost was high.

The massive use of DDT caused significant environmental damage, contaminating water sources and land. Some scholars described the intervention as a large-scale experiment.

Art, too, tells the story of that moment suspended between hope and transformation.

In 1952, Sardinian artist Costantino Nivola returned to the island on assignment for the magazine Fortune, which sent him with a clear mission: to depict, through his brush, the extraordinary transformation brought about by the “Sardinia Project.”

Nivola travelled through villages and countryside, and what he saw struck him deeply. He did not draw charts or technical maps; instead, he captured the soul of a people in transition. His watercolors are filled with light and vibrant color, where scenes of everyday life blend with the signs of advancing modernity, such as the markings left on house walls by disinfection teams. It is a poetic reportage that transforms a public health operation into a visual narrative of faces, whitewashed squares, and an almost magical sense of liberation. His drawings, quick, essential, deeply human, convey faces, gestures, and landscapes. Not only the arrival of American modernity, but also the dignity of an ancient rural reality, is observed with a gaze that is both affectionate and critical.

Those works, later published in 1953, are not merely documentation: they became the seed of his future artistic vision, a bridge between the archaic Sardinia of his memories and the dream of an island finally healthy and modern, an idea that would later inspire projects such as his utopian village in Orani.

These images, now preserved also at the Museo Nivola, stand as a valuable testimony to a pivotal historical moment: when Sardinia finally emerged from a centuries-old scourge.

Thus, through science, art, and entrepreneurial vision, Sardinia changed its face: from a land marked by malaria to a destination capable of attracting the world. 

The transformation of the Costa Smeralda by Prince Karim Aga Khan in the 1960s was made possible by the radical anti-malarial campaign carried out in Sardinia in the preceding years. 

Without this reclamation, the luxury tourism development project would not have been feasible. The American campaign thus acted as a catalyst, allowing Aga Khan to enhance lands that had previously been inaccessible.