I presume they used insecticides. Anyone know what they used?
replies(5):
https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240031357
It's 40 pages long. To summarize, the three pillars are universal healthcare, identifying the areas where malaria is more/less prevalent/even eradicated, and surveilling eradicated/low transmission areas for new infection.
Insecticides are a part of the "universal healthcare" aspect because vector control is a part of actually preventing malaria. But you can kill mosquitoes with things other than insecticides and mosquitoes in different regions are sometimes immune, which is why it's important to identify specific regions to target for eradication as there's no "one-size fits all" strategy. The paper goes into more detail on page 18 on the various methods of using different insecticides or parasite killing methods. All the methods have to be utilized in concert.
Once a region has eradicated malaria, surveillance is what prevents it from coming back. But it's also necessary as the number of infections go down to spend more resources on trying to find the few that are left.
Interestingly, discrimination plays a role because the last people getting malaria are generally those of very low status that don't get healthcare. If you don't expand healthcare to every single person in a society, malaria will come back.
I'm probably oversimplifying the paper a lot as a non-expert, but it seems the best way to eradicate malaria isn't a magic technological bullet but effective administration and project management using the treatment methods we already have.