The golden age of aid

WASHINGTON: Bill Gates is now focused on the eradication of malaria, and parasites everywhere have reason to fear.

There are, he tells me, two possible places to draw a line across Africa marking the next northward advance of malaria elimination. “If you want to get all of Zambia,” he explains, “you also have to get Katanga” (a portion of the Democratic Republic of Congo where health services are weak). Clearing islands such as Papua New Guinea and Madagascar, he says, should be relatively easy. A new Gates Foundation report argues against malaria containment in favor of malaria elimination -- a goal that has provoked skepticism even among some malaria experts. Gates wants to see the plasmodium at Appomattox.