His tenure would be marked by prolific, hitherto unsurpassed advances in Argentine public health. He increased the number of hospital beds in the country, from 66,300 in 1946 to 132,000 in 1954. He eradicated, in only two years, endemic diseases such as malaria, by means of highly aggressive campaigns against the vector. Syphilis and venereal diseases practically vanished. He built 234 free, public hospitals or policlinics, lowered the tuberculosis mortality rate from 130 per 100,000 to 36 per 100,000, ended epidemics such as typhus and brucellosis, and decreased drastically the nation's infant mortality rate from 90 to 56 per thousand live births.