This is the report of a meeting held in Ahungalla, Sri Lanka, 16-19 January 1994, under the sponsorship of the Rockefeller Foundation, Health Sciences Division. The meeting was initiated jointly by the Rockefeller Foundation and the TDX Special Programme of the World Health Organization in order to bring together scientists with a wide spectrum of experience relating to malarial disease and pathogenesis. The objective was to generate interdisciplinary discussion ranging from the clinical pictures of malarial infections and their impact in different parts of the world, to current investigations on mechanisms of pathogenesis and clinical immunity and the genetic determinants in human and parasite populations affecting the nature of the disease.