The Museum of the History of the Resort City of Sochi features a sculpture of Sergey Yuryevich Sokolov — a malariologist and honored doctor of the RSFSR, whose name is associated with the fight against malaria.

In the Sochi region, the incidence of malaria in the late 19th — early 20th centuries amounted to 25 percent of the local population. In the 1920s, under the leadership and personal initiative of Sergey Sokolov, anti-malarial stations were opened along the entire coast. The “Malaria Station”, as the Sochi people called it then, was located in a small house on Stalin Avenue. Doctor Sokolov lived there with his family. Patients were brought in day and night, and their treatment was carried out in this building. When there was not enough space for more patients, they were even placed on the street near the station building.

Sergey Sokolov set himself a very difficult task of organizing the treatment of patients and eliminating the very cause of the disease at the same time. It was then that the first anti-malaria measures began to be taken in Sochi: swampy areas were drained, and water bodies were sprayed with insecticides and petrolized. The construction of new facilities in the city was coordinated with the malaria station. Sergey Sokolov learned from his colleagues that a Sukhumi doctor named Rukhadze had been on a scientific mission to Italy and brought back small gambusia fish that feed on mosquito larvae. This small fish was brought from Georgia specifically to fight malaria. It was released into water bodies to destroy larvae of the malaria mosquito. Sergey Sokolov mobilized all medical workers and the public and with their help organized clean-up days for the city, planted eucalyptus trees everywhere, which drained the soil perfectly, and sealed tree hollows in the forests where malaria mosquito larvae could overwinter.

Doctor Sokolov was vested with great influence and was very strict about sanitary control in the city. Thus, violators of sanitary regulations were fined mercilessly. These efforts helped reduce malaria cases in the region by the early 1930s. However, it would still be long until malaria was completely eliminated in Sochi. Only in 1956, at a meeting of the Sochi City Council, Sokolov reported that for the first time not a single case of malaria had been registered. His achievements earned him government awards.