ABSTRACT
Malaria control efforts aimed at the reduction of disease incidence and transmission, eventually leading to elimination, require reducing transmission to levels that are less than self-sustaining. Malaria control with an eye toward elimination, therefore, becomes a Sisyphean endeavor with the available control methods, requiring an endless and intense use of partially effective strategies. The antiparasitic and mosquitocidal drug ivermectin, along with other mosquitocidal and transmission-blocking drug candidates, are also under development and could contribute significantly to malaria control if implemented alongside a mass treatment intervention campaign. A key feature of gene drive-based population suppression strategies for malaria control is that the malaria vector is at least transiently eliminated from the treatment area, thereby attenuating the transmission of any Plasmodium species or strain or any other pathogen that might be vectored by the same mosquito species. However, these SIT approaches, while potentially powerful under certain transmission conditions, do fulfill the requirement for self-propagating and self-sustainable malaria control.
