In many places outside the U.S., however, malaria is a devastatingly common fact of life. Of the millions it strikes each year, more than 2.7 million die -- most of them children. Forty percent of the world's population is at risk of contracting the disease which is caused by parasites and spread by the bite of the Anopheles mosquito.

Naturally occurring climatic events can exacerbate the problem by creating puddles, swamps, and other moist areas in which the mosquitoes proliferate. In the wake of last November's Hurricane Mitch, Honduras was plagued by more than 30,000 cases of malaria.

In Yemen, it didn't require a hurricane, but only above-average rainfall, to create a malaria problem that critically strained the country's resources. In early December, after the deaths of approximately 2,000 people, Yemen's health minister requested the urgent assistance of regional and international organizations.

The tragedy of malaria is not simply measured by the number of fatalities it leaves in its wake. The suffering of the more than 500 million people infected with malaria worldwide -- and the suffering of their families -- must also be part of the reckoning. Economies suffer too: according to a World Health Organization report, malaria-affected families clear only 40% of land for crops than healthy families do.

This widespread loss of productivity takes its toll at the national level. In countries where malaria is endemic, as many as one-third of hospital beds are occupied by its victims. Each bout of the disease is estimated to cost a working adult 10 productive working days. The costs to a country's economy are enormous and painful.

But the greatest tragedy is that the world nearly eradicated malaria in the 1950s and early 1960s. International efforts stopped just short of success, and now there is more human malaria in the world than at any previous time in history.

In addition, the parasites that cause the illness are getting harder to kill. Evolving in response to human attempts to treat the disease, they are becoming resistant to antimalarial drugs. "Chloroquine was the most efficacious drug we had for malaria," said Dyann Wirth, professor of immunology and infectious disease at the Harvard School of Public Health (SPH), "but within 20 years of its first use, resistant parasites appeared. Another drug, mefloquine, took 20 years to develop, and resistance to it took only five years to appear. If we're in a race to develop new antimalarial drugs faster than the parasites are developing resistance, then we're falling behind and are in danger of losing." In this contest, the consequences of loss are deadly. Wirth, however, is not going to admit defeat.

The Harvard Malaria Initiative, directed by Wirth and housed at SPH, is one of many strategies the world is taking to try and beat the disease. The Initiative, officially founded in 1997, builds upon two decades of Wirth's research on the innermost workings of malaria parasites.

The Initiative is a partnership of public and private sectors involving universities, private companies, and governmental agencies. "The intent," said Wirth, "is for this to be beneficial for all involved: here at the School we'll be supported in our research, the results of which we will make available to our pharmaceutical partners. They will produce new antimalarial drugs that we'll use to combat malaria worldwide. In addition, our research will probably enable the production of 'spin-off' drugs, based on the discoveries that we make, that will be useful for cancer and other health problems."

The short-term plan is to focus on finding new antimalarials and to continue the work of understanding how the parasites become drug- resistant, with the goal of reversing that drug resistance. In the long run, Wirth envisions an increasing use of genomics in drug discovery: "The genome of the Plasmodium falciparum parasite, the microbe that causes the most serious of the world's malaria, is being sequenced. Understanding the genetic constitution of the parasite holds a great potential for the identification of new targets for antimalarial drugs. As we pursue the genomic aspects of malaria research, we also hope to increase our collaborations with other researchers and laboratories at SPH and throughout Harvard."

The world nearly eradicated malaria once. The Harvard Malaria Initiative provides researchers and drug developers additional opportunities to rid the world of this ancient scourge. "The disease is worse today than at any time in history," said Wirth. "And that's frustrating. Yet we know much more about the organism and we're much more advanced in being able to develop interventions than ever before. Now is the time for us take concerted action and fight back against malaria."