Malaria is one of the world's most prevalent diseases, affecting about 200 million people.
There have been successes and failures trying to combat the disease, but now a group of Australian and Papua New Guinean researchers believe they have developed a treatment that can completely cure one of the most common strains.
By combining two drugs, and giving it to patients over three days, the researchers found the treatment completely eliminated the vivax strain of malaria.
The trial was led by Papua New Guinean medical doctor Moses Laman as part of a PHD he has been undertaking.
The 36-year-old, who was raised in rural Papua New Guinea, knows intimately what it's like to have malaria
"I've even been admitted to hospital as a child for malaria at least twice in rural PNG, and that's tough," he said.
The Papua New Guinean researcher said he was excited about what he and his colleagues discovered after two years of field tests in Papua New Guinea.
"It's satisfying to not only see our work, but all the other malaria research, and the time and effort and planning that malaria has recently attracted globally," he said.
"The incidence[s] of malaria globally, not just in Papua New Guinea, have been declining so as someone who has come from an endemic setting it's satisfying to see."
Although the number of cases may be falling, a child still dies of malaria every minute in Africa according to the World Health Organisation.
Dr Laman and his team trialled their treatment on 250 children over two years in PNG and found they could kill the vivax malaria parasite in the children.
Normally the parasite hides in the liver, re-emerging to attack the host again and again.
But this treatment breaks that cycle.
Vivax malaria is not usually lethal, but it can make a child anaemic and vulnerable to other diseases.
Dr Laman's study was supervised by veteran malaria researcher Professor Tim Davis from the University of Western Australia's school of medicine and pharmacology.
Professor Davis said vivax malaria was a devastating disease that affected many of the world's developing countries.
"Malaria is a disease of poverty and contributes to poverty and it makes it difficult for young children to develop normally if they're recurrently unwell with infections like malaria," he said.
"Once you roll out a program in a resource-limited setting, it's very tough."
“It also puts a big burden on the local health infrastructure.
"Countries like Papua New Guinea have limited resources and wealth to deal with major medical problems like malaria.
"If something can be done to reduce the impact, that frees up funding for use in other areas."
Professor Davis said the combination drug treatment also cured the potentially lethal form of malaria - falciparum.
"We found that the new treatment was very effective - more effective than the currently recommended treatment -with good rates of cure in both falciparum and vivax malaria," he said.
"And that should translate into better health outcomes not only at an individual level, but at a community and national level as well, should this be introduced, as I think it should be in future."
But the treatment still needs to be assessed and approved by the World Health Organisation and the Papua New Guinean government.
Dr Laman said PNG's existing treatment program had only relatively recently been introduced.
"It's not straightforward," he said.
"Once you roll out a program in a resource-limited setting, it's very tough.
"You can't just go and pull it back and introduce something else. It creates confusion.
"So there are so many issues that are practical that are yet to be sorted out."
But Dr Laman and his colleagues hoped their new treatment would be adopted sooner rather than later.
