Introduction

To be able to predict future malaria risk, an understanding of the history of malaria and of its current contextual determinants is essential. Moreover, consideration of how the current determinants of malaria will evolve in the future, accompanied by a frank analysis of the uncertainty surrounding such predictions, is also necessary. We hope that the chapters in this volume will inform future malaria risk assessments by identifying the important contextual determinants and by making explicit the strengths, weaknesses, and conditionalities of the predictive relationships used in such assessments, especially those concerning the health impacts of global climate change.