Several billion people are at daily risk of life-threatening vector-borne diseases such as malaria, trypanosomiasis and dengue, and the dark shadow of plague hovers in the few endemic foci where it waits ready to re-emerge in a deadly pandemic. The abortive attempt to control malaria in the 1960s showed us the problem that we face in eradicating vector-borne diseases. Research into these tropical diseases fell into neglect during the 1960s, but in the 1970s research was once more directed towards vectorborne diseases and more recent initiatives such as the Roll Back Malaria Campaign have kept them in the international spotlight. If we are not to repeat the mistakes of the past it will be necessary to use all of our knowledge of vector biology.cambridge university press Cambridge