Abstract

This text, written by Arturo Jauretche, recovers the figure of Dr. Carlos Alberto Alvarado (1904-1986). When Ramón Carrillo was secretary of Public Health of the Nation, Dr. Alvarado led a campaign to control malaria in the Argentine northwest, achieving an important reduction in the number of cases and generating wide international repercussions. In 1955, Dr. Alvarado was resigned from his post by the Revolución Libertadora, at which time he was designated regional advisor by the Pan-American Health Organization, and later chief of the malaria eradication program of the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland between 1959 and 1964. Upon his return to the country in 1966 he organized the Rural Health Plan and created the figure of the "public health agent" and "public health rounds," anticipating concepts that would later be developed within Primary Health Care. Jauretche's text was originally published in 1967 in the book Los profetas del odio, by the publishing house of Arturo Peña Lillo, editor of the great works of Argentine "national thought." This re-edition in the section "Memory and history" is a way of paying homage to one of the indisputable leaders of Public Health in Argentina.