Dr Robert D. Newman is a pediatrician and the director of the Global Malaria Programme at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. As director of a maternal and child health NGO in Mozambique in the late 1990s, he was astounded at the human toll of malaria in Africa. He has dedicated the last 10 years to combating the disease, first at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and more recently at WHO. He believes that through relentless investment in scaling-up the malaria tools we have today, developing new tools for tomorrow, and fostering leadership in affected countries, this ancient foe can be defeated.