What does the future hold for the fight against malaria in
Africa? If we limit ourselves to the conventional approaches to
fighting malaria - drugs, bednets and biocides - the future
looks bleak. It looks like an endless war. The war started about
1950 when DDT and chloroquine looked like perfect weapons. But
since then the development of resistance has shown us how
ephemeral they were. The mosquitoes began to eat DDT for
breakfast, and the malaria parasites learned to swim in
chloroquine. Historians are showing us that malaria has
incredible tenacity in Africa. We long for a solution to this
horrible problem - an Exit Strategy. Unfortunately WHO, USAID
and the UN agencies offer us nothing but more of the same - and
with declining budgets. For the past few decades there has been
an implicit but mythical Exit Strategy for the fight against
malaria - the development of a vaccine. This implied weapon has
been the stimulus for enormous amounts of immunological
research, and has also given solace to field workers