Malaria management: past, present, and future

The prospect of malaria eradication has been raised recently by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with support from the international community. There are significant lessons to be learned from the major successes and failures of the eradication campaign of the 1960s, but cessation of transmission in the malaria heartlands of Africa will depend on a vaccine and better drugs and insecticides. Insect control is an essential part of reducing transmission. To date, two operational scale interventions, indoor residual spraying and deployment of long-lasting insecticide-treated nets (LLINs), are effective at reducing transmission. Our ability to monitor and evaluate these interventions needs to be improved so that scarce resources can be sensibly deployed, and new interventions that reduce transmission in a cost-effective and efficient manner need to be developed. New interventions could include using transgenic mosquitoes, larviciding in urban areas, or utilizing cost-effective consumer products. Alongside this innovative development agenda, the potential negative impact of insecticide resistance, particularly on LLINs, for which only pyrethroids are available, needs to be monitored.