Higher costs for malaria elimination than control

The last of four publications in the Lancet’s Malaria Elimination series examines the economic costs of eliminating malaria, and highlights data indicating that “the cost of achieving malaria elimination will be substantially greater than the cost of control”.  The authors conducted a review of published works and created and analysed datasets from present elimination programmes. Comparing the economic costs of malaria elimination versus malaria control in China, Mauritius, Swaziland and Tanzania, they concluded that elimination is not likely to produce a cost-saving benefit over control within 50 years.