With leadership from the Malaria Elimination Group and the UCSF Global Health Group, The Lancet has published a special series of four papers and four comments on malaria elimination.

To address the challenges that confront today�s 32 malaria-eliminating countries (one-third of all malarious countries), The Lancet Series examines the technical, operational, and financial aspects of elimination. In four papers, the Series provides an overview of elimination, quantifies the relative technical and operational feasibility of elimination, and investigates the challenges, risks, operational requirements, costs and benefits of achieving elimination and preventing the reintroduction of malaria.

The Series includes a global call to action that details the priorities for malaria elimination in the coming decade to ensure continued momentum, and calls on specific players to increase their involvement in specific ways. The challenges of eliminating all forms of human malaria and the critical long-term research priorities are also discussed. Continued progress with elimination is argued to be essential to the eventual achievement of global malaria eradication.