In terms of investment, Malaria is down there with the rare/orphan diseases. Maybe as Global Warming allows anopheles to migrate north into the Southern US and the Mediterranean basin the world will wake up and start investing in Malaria research proportionally to its impact.

Then again, for-profit medical research concentrates in treatment, not prevention. Malaria vaccine research is unlikely to get a lot of impetus from Big Pharma. Massive vaccination campaigns and worldwide eradication are a socialist policy. Today's world would never set out to eradicate Small Pox.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman