Malaria fact of the day

As a component of the Million Death Study, Neeraj Dhingra and colleagues (Nov 20, p 1768) estimate by verbal autopsy that about 200 000 people die of malaria in India each year. This estimate is much higher than the WHO estimate of between 10 000 and 21 000 deaths in 2006. New efforts to obtain estimates of the number of malaria deaths are welcome, but there are several reasons why Dhingra and colleagues' results should be viewed with caution. Read more.