Priority was given to turning the Canal Zone into a healthy area for people to work in. Dr William Crawford Gorgas, a sanitation officer who had worked in Havana, Cuba, during the Spanish-American War of 1898, was contracted to undertake the enormous task of ridding the area of yellow fever and malaria. On arriving in Panama, Gorgas referred to the area "as one of the most disease-ridden places he had ever seen." In two years, however, he managed to completely eradicate yellow fever and control malaria.
