For too long a common assumption has been that malaria has gone the way of polio and whooping cough: diseases largely conquered by modern science and improved public health. In Europe that is true - malaria did not cause a single death here in 2000, according to the World Health Organisation. In Africa, the situation could not be more different: after steadily falling as a cause of death since the 1950s, malaria is again on the rise. While much attention and billions of pounds has rightly been given to HIV-Aids research, treatment and prevention, humble malaria appears to be becoming increasingly dangerous.
The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene recently carried a special supplement on malaria, arguing that the true number of malaria-related deaths in Africa could be 2.8 million a year, nearly three times the WHO's estimates. The heaviest burden from malaria falls on sub-Saharan Africa (as does HIV-Aids), where malaria strains are frequently resistant to existing drugs such as chloroquine. And it is malaria, not Aids, that is the region's leading cause of death for children under the age of five.
That's the bad news. The good news is that - unlike Aids - malaria can be treated and prevented relatively cheaply. A new class of drugs, Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT), is highly effective and would make a huge difference. Naturally, ACT is more expensive - around £1 per dose - but donor nations should be aware that this is one problem that can be solved by throwing money at it. More basic measures - common before the development of DDT promised to banish malaria-bearing mosquitoes - need to be resurrected through education and funding, such as providing nets and draining the habitats of larvae.
There is a payback to fighting malaria. As David Bloom and David Canning of Harvard's school of public health argue, international aid aimed directly at improving health, rather than poverty reduction, is a more effective way of helping Africa to thrive. Robust growth may come to Africa through a mosquito net, rather than a donor's chequebook.
