Malaria vaccines in the future--what strategies now?

In addition to the inherent challenge, driven by curiosity and the excitement of the chase, the quest for malaria vaccines has been made more imperative over the past two decades or so by pragmatic assessment of the odds in a disease which has been with mankind for millenia. Accel­ erating spread of parasite resistance to more and more drugs, with too few new molecular structures in the pipeline casts a dark shadow over the future­ the immediate future. Coupled with insecticide resistance of vectors and the momentous cost in money and human effort absorbed by classical malaria control programs, the pressure of decreasmg drug efficacy became critical in making available a relative profusion of funds over a short time period for the vaccine quest on a global scale.