Malaria existed in Greece since prehistoric times. Its prevalence fluctuated depending on climatic, socioeconomic and political changes. By the nineteenth century, Greece was the most malarious country in Europe and the one most heavily infected with its lethal form, falciparum malaria. Owing to pressures on the environment from economic development, agrarian colonisation and heightened mobility, the situation became so serious that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries one in every three or four Greeks contracted malaria each year! Wars further exacerbated an already grave state of affairs. Death and physical suffering were alleviated with the use of quinine. In the interwar years, the Greeks came to consume about one fifth of the world production of quinine.
Effective malaria control was initiated thanks to foreign aid, mainly from the League of Nations, the Rockefeller Foundation and the UNRRA DDT spraying campaign of the immediate post WWII years. However, the DDT campaign alone did not  eliminate malaria from the country. It took a general raising of living standards and overall improvement of health services to eventually rid Greece from indigenous malaria cases in the mid 1970s and to make malaria in Greece history. Today, the Hellenic Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KEELPNO) is responsible for surveillance and intervention to prevent malaria from once again gaining a foothold, on account of the current wave of migrants from countries where malaria is still prevalent.