which U. S. Army medical officer headed the team that killed thousands of disease-carrying mosquitoes in Panama during the construction of the canal?

Colonel William Crawford Gorgas

Explanation:

Colonel William Crawford Gorgas led the Sanitation Department team, with more than 4,000 employees with a $2 million budget by the end of 1906. The team started with screening of operational buildings, residences, hospitals, and railway car windows and doors. The team made use of 120 tons of pyrethrum powder (a dried flower that served as an insecticide), 300 tons of sulphur, and 50,000 gallons of kerosene oil per month in a massive fumigation program.

The sanitation team was divided into Stegomyia and Anopheles teams.

The Stegomyia fumigation team, carried out their operations by sealing doors and windows with paper, burning sulphur or pyrethrum for at least an hour in each room. They also laid a skim of oil on all water containers, cisterns, cesspools, and drainage ditches weekly to prevent mosquito propagation.

Their activities led to the end of the yellow fever epidemic in November with only forty-seven fatalities.

On the other hand, the Anopheles team were equipped with mowers, machetes, and flamethrowers, where they hacked and burned away jungle vegetation to create sunny, windy areas that deprived Anopheles of its preferred habitat.

They also, create water-filled pans to entice mosquitoes to lay eggs, then dumped the larvae down a disinfected drain.

New well screened hospitals were also built, and isolation centers created with separate wards for different diseases. The results was that, no U.S. citizen died in Panama in the last three months of 1906, and eventually, Panama went from death-trap to a free from diseases community.