For Africa, the epicenter of the world’s malaria scourge, a historic break­through in health and economic development is now within reach. A combination of new technologies, new methods of disease control and rising public awareness is poised to bring malaria deaths down by 90 percent or more—if we follow through.

Efforts at malaria control in the 1950s and 1960s successfully used the insecticide DDT and the medicine chloroquine to eliminate the disease in many temperate and subtropical regions. But malaria persisted in the tropics and especially in Africa, where the intensity of transmission is the world’s highest for ecological reasons. Africa pays a fearful price for its ongoing malaria burden, not only in more than one million deaths every year but also in significantly reduced economic growth.

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