In the current issue of Clinical Chemistry , Cheng et al. describe their application of a recently developed commercial kit to perform molecular diagnosis of malaria by a capture and ligation probe-PCR (CLIP-PCR)2 strategy 1. Some review of the efforts directed against malaria is necessary to understand how CLIP-PCR will integrate into the current global malaria elimination effort. Sixty years ago, the WHO launched the Global Malaria Eradication Program (GMEP) (1955–1969). The GMEP was successful in eliminating malaria from numerous regions in temperate climates (including parts of southern Europe, the United States, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, India, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Venezuela, and the Caribbean Islands) 2. Operationally, the GMEP was largely equipped with insecticides—dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) with residual longevity was central to the mission 3—and motivated by evidence for interruption of malaria transmission from a control campaign in Greece and additional success in interrupting malaria and yellow fever transmission during construction of the Panama Canal 2, 3. Unfortunately, numerous biological (mosquito insecticide resistance and parasite drug resistance), socioeconomic, and political factors conspired against the GMEP, and the global effort to eradicate malaria fell well short of its goals 2, 3. Additionally, resurgence of disease has been well documented in numerous countries where malaria transmission had reached or was approaching elimination 4. Thus, whereas some campaigns against malaria have been durable and long-lived, others were very fragile. The effort to eliminate malaria was rejuvenated beginning with the 1997 International Conference on Malaria in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities Cooperation, held in Dakar, Senegal 5. At that time, malaria was killing an estimated 1.5–2.7 million people annually (3–5 people per min), insecticide resistance was being observed in many of the Anopheles species vectors 2, 6, and parasite …