We were attracted to these cheerful good-natured folk who were so well adapted to their tough environment…..Their detailed knowledge of their country, their skills and intelligence soon gained our respect.
He received a grant from Adelaide University and managed to determine that the condition was not caused by yaws, as had been suspected, rather it was a non-venereal treponemal infection.
In 1940 his research was finished and Hackett received a doctorate from Cambridge, however his paper Bone lesions of yaws in Uganda would not be published until much later, in 1951.
With the start of World War II Hackett joined the RAF, serving in Sierra Leone, Egypt, India and Burma, mainly being concerned with the prevention of malaria.
After the war ended, Hackett returned to England, where he became director of the Wellcome Museum of Anatomy and Pathology in London.
During the following ten years he helped organise yaws eradication programs in many countries in Africa, Asia and South America.
[4] The success of these campaigns in reducing the global prevalence of yaws and other endemic treponematoses by 95% was credited as one of the greatest public health achievements in the history of the organization.