Life and work of the Doctor Arnoldo Gabaldón

Arnoldo Gabaldón was a doctor, researcher and teacher, considered one of the most important epidemiologists of the 20th century. He developed a program against malaria that eliminated the disease in two thirds of the Venezuelan territory.

Gabaldón was born in 1909 in the state of Trujillo and at the age of 15 he traveled to Caracas to study Medicine at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV). In 1930 he traveled to Europe, where he obtained the malariology certificate awarded by the Institute of Tropical Diseases in Hamburg (Germany).

In 1936 he returned and founded the Special Directorate of Malariology of the Ministerio de Sanidad y Asistencia Social. As director, Gabaldón designed a malaria eradication strategy based on the training of personnel, the improvement of the housing system and the application of insecticides.

In 1959, he assumed the leadership of the Ministerio de Sanidad y de Asistencia Social and set out to increase the life expectancy of Venezuelans, in addition to his research work on the species that cause malaria.

Also, Gabaldón was an advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Pan-American Sanitary Bureau. In 1980 he founded Sociedad  Parasitológica Venezolana, which he presided over until 1982. He died in the city of Caracas on September 1, 1990.