Malaria has to some extent been forgotten by the international community,” said Allan Schapira, a senior official in WHO’s Rollback Malaria program. “Apart from AIDS, it is the single worst child health problem that we haven’t got a grip on.”

In Nigeria, a nation of 126 million people where government officials estimate up to one-quarter of the world’s malaria deaths occur, researchers at the national Nigerian Institute of Medical Research test malaria treatments and other drugs on mice in a single tiny, stiflingly hot laboratory.

“The resources available in Nigeria for this work are limited or even nonexistent,” research director Philip Agomo said.

A major cause of malaria’s alarming resurgence is the parasite’s increasing resistance to the drugs used to treat and prevent the disease – including chloroquine, the cheapest and most effective anti-malarial since the 1950s.