Malaria is most often a problem in poor countries, where such laboratories are scarce, and so is money to pay for tests and to maintain the machines needed to conduct them. A better way for doctors and paramedics in the field to be able to tell, for a particular patient, which drugs the infection is resistant to would thus be welcome. At the moment, working out which drugs, if any, a particular case of malaria is resistant to means sending a sample to a laboratory for a pcr test. The race between pharmacologists and malaria parasites has been going on since the mid-19th century, when widespread use of quinine began. Why do you think that infections and diseases are becoming drug resistant ?

