Malaria is an infectious disease. Many anti-malarial drugs have been
introduced to eliminate malaria. Earlier, the major antimalarial drugs were natural
products but in due course synthetic drugs have replaced them. Pursuing multiple
strategies is needed for discovering new drugs for malaria. Global International Centers
of Excellence for Malaria Research (ICEMR) network is conducting many research
studies. The research activities include clinical studies for assessing antimalarial drug
efficacies, drug susceptibilities of parasite isolates and determining resistancemediating
parasite polymorphisms. There are several approaches for the discovery of
new drugs. The approaches should also focus on low cost and novel therapies.
Currently, the available drugs are optimized in many ways using combination therapy
and the discovery of compounds from plants. This chapter focuses on the available
antimalarial medications, including both synthetic and natural products. The present
chapter also highlights indigenous medicinal plants, which can be potentially used for
the development of antimalarial drugs.
Keywords: Antimalarial medications, Malaria, Medicinal plants, Plasmodium.
