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The treatment and eradication of yellow fever.
In June 1900, Major Walter Reed, Chief Surgeon of the U.S. Army,
led a medical team to Cuba on a mission to investigate yellow
fever. For more than 200 years, the disease had terrorized the
United States, killing an estimated 100,000 people in the 19th
century alone. Shortly after Reed and his team arrived in Havana,
they began testing the radical theories of Carlos Finlay, a Cuban
doctor who believed that mosquitoes spread yellow fever. This
program documents the heroic efforts of Reed's medical team, some
of whom put their own lives on the line to verify Finlay's theory.
When yellow fever struck New Orleans in 1905,an aggressive mosquito
eradication campaign successfully ended the epidemic. It was the
last yellow fever outbreak in the United States and the first major
public health triumph of the 20th century.
Producer/director/writer: Adriana Bosch ("Fidel
Castro,""Reagan,""Jimmy Carter")