In Africa, over-treatment happens when a person who has malaria symptoms gets medication without a test.
Arne Hoel/World Bank
Despite tests which rapidly test for malaria being around for several years, overtreatment of malarial drugs still takes place in Africa.
Bloodletting was treatment for infection in the past.
Wellcome Library, London
While some ancient therapies proved effective enough that they are still used in some form today, on the whole they just aren't as good as modern antimicrobials at treating infections.
A young girl plays inside a mosquito net in Kibera, Nairobi.
Several countries within southern Africa are on the brink of eliminating malaria. But there are several challenges ahead.
Farmers beat the stalks of sweet wormwood trees to extract the leaves during harvesting in rural China, The plant contains artemisinin, the drug which won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
The drug partly responsible for more than halving the rate of malaria over the last 30 years and which won this year's Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine has a long history of use.
1964 poster: ‘Prevent Malaria and Take Care of People’s Health.’
Painted by Wu Hao 吴昊
The 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine went partly for research done during the Chinese Cultural Revolution based on traditional Chinese medicine. Here's the story of Project 523.
Indonesian schoolchildren show off the mark indicating they’ve just taken anti-filariasis medication, a drug that prevents just one of the world’s ‘neglected’ diseases.
The 2015 Nobel Prize in medicine went to research on remedies derived from natural compounds. Academia is continuing the fight against 'neglected' diseases by similarly hunting for new drugs in nature.
Never before has a Nobel gone to an expert in traditional Chinese medicine.
The first Chinese Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded for work based on traditional Chinese medicine. Will traditional medical knowledge now share the spotlight with evidence-based medicine?
Innocuous but deadly.
Scientists in France have found how the genes of the malaria parasite adapt to become resistant to artemisinin, one of the most effective remaining antimalarial drugs. Their discovery exposes a serious…