Developing combinations of drugs for malaria examination of critical issues and lessons learnt

The malaria burden Malaria is one of the major infectious diseases facing modern man. Estimates of the global burden vary but a figure of 400 to 600 million cases per year seems reasonable.1 2 The vast majority of cases are in African children under five. Despite the focus and burden of malaria in Africa, malaria is still an important public health problem in other tropical areas e.g. Indonesia, India, Papua New Guinea, and the Amazon area of Latin America. Whilst there are four species of human malaria, Plasmodium falciparum is the form that causes substantial morbidity and almost all of the mortality.