Abstract
Antimalarial drugs will be essential tools at all stages of malaria elimination along the path towards eradication, including the early control or "attack" phase to drive down transmission and the later stages of maintaining interruption of transmission, preventing reintroduction of malaria, and eliminating the last residual foci of infection. Drugs will continue to be used to treat acute malaria illness and prevent complications in vulnerable groups, but better drugs are needed for elimination-specific indications such as mass treatment, curing asymptomatic infections, curing relapsing liver stages, and preventing transmission. The ideal malaria eradication drug is a coformulated drug combination suitable for mass administration that can be administered in a single encounter at infrequent intervals and that results in radical cure of all life cycle stages of all five malaria species infecting humans. Short of this optimal goal, highly desirable drugs might have limitations such as targeting only one or two parasite species, the priorities being Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax. The malaria research agenda for eradication should include research aimed at developing such drugs and research to develop situation-specific strategies for using both current and future drugs to interrupt malaria transmission.
Highlights
Antimalarial drugs are used to treat malaria illness, to prevent both infection and disease caused by Plasmodia, to eliminate dormant malaria parasites from the liver, and to prevent malaria transmission
The main work of the group was to draft a research and development agenda that focuses on those new research questions and knowledge gaps that arise in response to the call for malaria eradication and that would not otherwise be at the top of the malaria research agenda
We briefly summarize a few of the insights gained from Malaria Eradication Research Agenda (malERA) reviews of some of the available material, including a dissection of the Global Malaria Eradication Program [17], and a broad overview of lessons learned from past malaria elimination efforts published by the Malaria Elimination Group [18]
Summary
Antimalarial drugs are used to treat malaria illness, to prevent both infection and disease caused by Plasmodia, to eliminate dormant malaria parasites from the liver, and to prevent malaria transmission. It is the view of the malERA Drugs Consultative Group that complete global malaria eradication will not be accomplished within most of our lifetimes, and that new tools, including new antimalarial drugs developed for elimination indications, are essential to move towards and achieve this ambitious but eminently worthy goal.
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