Kent Campbell, key figure in the fight against malaria, dies at the age of 80

Kent Campbell, an instrumental figure in the global fight against malaria – particularly in Africa, where he led an innovative program that provided mosquito nets to protect rural villagers from the mosquitoes that transmit the disease – died on February 20 in Oro Valley, Ariz. a suburb of Tucson. He was 80.

His death, in a nursing home, was caused by complications of cancer, his children said.

As chief of the malaria division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1981 to 1993, and later as a consultant to UNICEF and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Dr. Campbell credited with helping save lives on multiple continents.

In Zambia, where he began working with the Gates Foundation in 2005 on a program to distribute mosquito nets and newer antimalarial drugs, malaria cases were halved within three years. The program was later expanded to more than 40 other countries in Africa.

“His legacy in my country is that he is one of the people who contributed greatly to the control and prevention of malaria,” said Kafula Silumbe, a Zambian public health specialist who worked closely with Dr. Campbell, in an interview. “It was a collective effort, but he was definitely part of that initial push.”

Tall and lanky, with a Southern accent that betrayed his Tennessee upbringing, Dr. Campbell on what would become a four-decade career in public health.

In 1972, during his childhood residency in Boston, he joined the CDC as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. Not long after, he was sent to Sierra Leone to help investigate an outbreak of Lassa fevera virulent hemorrhagic virus.

“I had never heard of Lassa fever,” he said a video history of the CDC “I probably couldn’t even spell it if I was asked.”

He had little to no training in the importance and use of personal protective equipment. To find relief from the intense heat, he punctured holes in his breathing apparatus, which he later admitted was a bad idea.

Hoping to learn more about Lassa fever, agency officials sent him to Ireland to conduct serological, or antibody-detecting, tests on nuns who had previously worked in Sierra Leone. He traveled there with his wife Elizabeth (Knight) Campbell, whom he had married in 1966.

A few days later he almost collapsed due to a severe headache, high fever and an excruciating sore throat.

Dr. Campbell and his wife then traveled to London so he could be treated at a hospital with expertise in tropical diseases. The episode then took a surreal turn: When US officials sent a military transport plane to pick up the couple, they took with them a spare Apollo space capsule, which they rode in as a precaution.

“In retrospect, it’s not clear whether I had Lassa fever,” said Dr. Campbell later. “But obviously I didn’t die.”

With a reprieve and a newfound appreciation for hunting disease, he stayed at the CDC. In 1973, he moved to El Salvador to battle malaria, which had essentially been orphaned by global public health organizations and aid groups.

“He was outraged by the injustice and unfairness of things,” said Laurie Garrett, who wrote about Dr. Campbell wrote in her book “The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance” (1994), in an interview. “It just didn’t seem right to him that a plague like malaria, which killed millions of people every year, received no investment, concern and global attention because most of the people who died from it were poor.”

Carlos Clinton Campbell III was born on January 9, 1944 in Knoxville, Tennessee. His father was a life insurance salesman and his mother, Betty Ann (Murphy) Campbell, managed the household. His parents wanted to name him Clint, but his younger sister, Ann, had trouble pronouncing the name, and he ended up as Kent.

He became interested in medicine early on after his sister and mother both died of cancer: Ann when she was five, their mother when he was in high school.

He studied biology at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, graduating in 1966. He received his medical degree from Duke University in 1970 and earned a master’s degree in public health from Harvard University after completing his pediatric residency there.

Dr. Campbell bounced around the world, from the corridors of public health to isolated villages, and back.

“He had a deceptive attitude because of his southern, laconic appearance,” Ms. Garrett said. “Almost every time you walked into his office, these giant, long legs would go up on the desk and he would lean back in his chair. And because it’s so long, it would automatically take up 12 feet of space.”

This made him seem easy to get along with.

“But when he got going, you could feel everything boiling to the surface,” she added. “He was incredibly impatient, and I think that pushed him to ask big questions and take bold steps to help things.”

After his work at the CDC, Dr. Campbell helped establish a college of public health at the University of Arizona and consulted for several global health organizations. He joined in 2005 PATHa nonprofit health care organization based in Seattle, as director of the malaria program in Africa, funded by the Gates Foundation.

With malaria becoming resistant to most common drug treatments, he focused on prevention.

“The vector in Africa is actually a single species spread across the continent, called Anopheles gambiae,” he said in a interview with AllAfrica, a pan-African news organization. “It’s like the superstar of broadcasters.”

Two years after the mosquito net program started in Zambia, the country saw a 29 percent drop in infant mortality, according to PATH.

“To put that into perspective, there is nothing that matches that, which is a reflection of how many deaths malaria has caused in Zambia and how powerful mosquito nets can reduce transmission,” Dr. Campbell told All of Africa. “That’s all it really took. It was just remarkable. Clinics became empty during the transmission season.”

Dr. Campbell is survived by his wife; his children, Dr. Kristine Campbell and Dr. Patrick Campbell; his brothers, Robert and John Campbell; his stepsisters, Melissa Hansen and Rebecca Arrants; and four grandchildren.

Dr. Campbell retired from PATH in 2015.

“I had no intention of fighting this infection and disease,” He wrote of his professional career. “In reality, it chose me.”

He added: “We chose not to listen to the naysayers.”