Clinical status and implications of antimalarial drug resistance.

Africa carries the greatest burden of disease caused by Plasmodium falciparum, and we can expect this burden to rise in the near future, mainly because of drug resistance. Although effective drugs are available (such as artemether-lumefantrine, mefloquine, atovaquone-proguanil and halofantrine) they are uniformly too expensive for routine use. Affordable options include chloroquine plus sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP), amodiaquine (alone or in combination with SP) and chlorproguanil-dapsone. Artemisinin combination therapy may offer considerable advantages over alternative therapies, but its introduction faces considerable logistic difficulty.