A 24-year-old pregnant Yao woman from the Mangochi District in Malawi visited the village health clinic monthly to receive prenatal care. While waiting to be seen by the health provider, she and other women present listened to health education talks which were often about the dangers of malaria during pregnancy, and the need to install screens around the house to keep the mosquitoes away, to sleep under a bednet, and to take a chloroquine tablet once a week. Toward the end of her second trimester of pregnancy, the woman returned home from her prenatal visit with her eight tablets of chloroquine wrapped in a small packet of brown paper. She promptly gave the medicine to her husband to save for the next time he or one of their children fell ill. The next week she developed a very high malarial fever and went into labor prematurely. The six-month-old fetus was born dead.

Over a two-week period in the summer of 1989, five Swiss citizens living within a mile of Geneva International Airport presented at several hospitals with acute fever and chills. All had malaria. Four of the five had no history of travel to a malarious region; none had a history of intravenous drug use or blood transfusion. Apart from their symptoms, the only thing linking the five was their proximity to the airport. A subsequent epidemiologic investigation suggested that the malaria miniepidemic was caused by the bite of stowaway mosquitoes en route from a malaria-endemic country. The warm weather, lack of systematic spraying of aircraft, and the close proximity of residential areas to the airport facilitated the transmission of the disease.

Malaria is a part of everyday life in Africa south of the Sahara. Its impact on children is particularly severe. Mothers who bring unconscious children to the hospital often report that the children were playing that morning, convulsed suddenly, and have been unconscious ever since. These children are suffering from the most frequently fatal complication of the disease, cerebral malaria. Other children succumb more slowly to malaria, becoming progressively more anemic with each subsequent infection. By the time they reach the hospital, they are too weak to sit and are literally gasping for breath. Many children are brought to hospitals as a last resort, after treatment given for “fever” at the local health center has proved ineffective. Overall, children with malaria account for a third of all hospital admissions. A third of all children hospitalized for malaria die. In most parts of Africa, there are no effective or affordable options to prevent the