The fight against malaria, which the WHO reactivated in 1999 with its Roll Back Malaria programme, emphasizes early curative treatment of malaria, particularly in children, in order to decrease mortality and morbidity. Recent estimates confirm a disturbing persistence of endemic malaria with around 515 million cases and 1.0 million deaths per year.The available range of standard antimalarial drugs is narrow. There are only four classes of compounds, probably with different mechanisms of action: 4-aminoquinolines, amino-alcohols, artemisinin derivatives (isolated from a plant, Artemisia annua), and antifolates and drugs related to them.