ABSTRACT
In spite of massive investments in research and eradication programs, malaria still continues to be a major public health problem. The management of malaria by the conventional biomedical strategy has well-known limitations due to changing patterns of resistance to antimalarials and pesticides and the increased spread of Plasmodium falciparum infection posing new challenges (Narayan, 2002). In this context, this chapter aims to make two points: (1) The indigenous medical knowledge systems of India and perhaps of other countries have had their own understanding of malarial fevers and found local solutions before modern medical science arrived at its own. (2) Many current research projects for finding antimalarials from traditional medicine are inadequate because they do not incorporate in their design the etiology, classification, and management schemes of traditional medical knowledge.
