In 1955, the World Health Assembly directed the World Health Organization to launch a global malaria elimination program with DDT as its centerpiece. By 1959, when the program swung into operation, more than 300 million people had already been saved by DDT. By 1960, malaria had been eliminated from 11 countries. As malaria rates went down, life expectancies went up, as did crop production, land values, and relative wealth. Probably no country benefited more from the WHO program than Nepal, where spraying began in 1960. At the time, more than two million Nepalese, mostly children, suffered from
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