Drug resistant malaria was a major factor contributing to the failure of a worldwide campaign to eradicate malaria in the last century, and now threatens the large investment being made by the global community in the rollout of effective new drug combinations to replace failed drugs. Four related papers in this issue of Malaria Journal make the case for creating the World Anti malarial Resistance Network (WARN), which will consist of four linked open-access global databases containing clinical, in vitro, molecular and pharmacological data, and networks of reference laboratories that will support these databases and related surveillance activities. WARN will serve as a public resource to guide anti malarial drug treatment and prevention policies and to help confirm and characterize the new emergence of new resistance to anti malarial drugs and to contain its spread.

 Carol Hopkins Sibley, Karen Barnes, and Christopher Plowe; 2007, 6:118 doi: 10.1186/1475-2875-6-118