The Venezuelan scientist who proved the effectiveness of an inexpensive drug against malaria.

Carlos Chaccour survived two floods, a cholera epidemic, a hurricane, and a pandemic to prove that ivermectin is useful in the fight against the mosquito that transmits malaria. The 45-year-old Venezuelan researcher based his work on a seemingly simple question: if ivermectin eliminates lice, insects that feed on blood, would it also be able to eliminate the Anopheles mosquito, which spreads malaria when it feeds on blood? No one had proven that ivermectin could act as an insecticide in the bloodstream when he posed that question at the beginning of his scientific career 18 years ago. The first opportunity to investigate that intuition took place in 2007, when she began her postgraduate studies at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, after having. Three years earlier, Chaccour had completed her rural year at the La Milagrosa Center in Maniapure, a clinic that provided care to the Panare indigenous communities located in the jungles of northwestern Venezuelan Amazonia.