The purpose of this work is to review the progress towards malaria vaccination that has been made over the last four or so years, and the prospects and difficulties as they now appear. Although some of the older literature will be referred to as necessary background, it is not treated here in any detail. The reader who wishes for a fuller historical perspective should see, for instance, Brown (1969), Cohen & Mitchell (1978), Desowitz & Miller (1980), Mitchell (1984), Miller, David & Hadley (1984), Heidrich (1986) and, specifically for a consideration of sporozoite vaccination, Nussenzweig & Nussenzweig (1984, 1986). Naturally, any summary of vaccination will lean on the immunology of the disease, but malaria immunology is not reviewed here in its own right. The reader requiring the most recent attempt to cover this field should see the work edited by Perlmann & Wigzell (1988); some individual chapters of that volume will be referred to below.