Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (1RAR) deployed on

Full list of author information is available at the end of the articleBackground Tafenoquine is a long elimination half-life [1] primaquine analog that has the potential to replace mefloquine for weekly malaria chemoprophylaxis. Tafenoquine was evalu-ated in a series of placebo-controlled studies in mixed or semi-immune residents of Africa and Southeast Asia in the late 1990s [2-4]. The weekly standard of care, meflo-quine, was also evaluated in some of the same studies. The protective efficacies (95 % CI) of tafenoquine at the intended dose (200 mg per day for three days followed by weekly 200 mg maintenance doses) and mefloquine in semi-immune residents of Ghana were 86 % (76-92%) and 86 % (72-93%) respectively [2]. In a second study in semi-immune residents of Kenya, the protective efficacy of tafenoquine was reported to be 86 % (73-93%) [3]. For a discussion of the use of placebo control arms in malaria chemoprophylaxis studies in which semi-immune individ-uals are enrolled, see [5]. In 2000/2001, the safety, tolerability and efficacy of weekly tafenoquine and mefloquine were evaluated in s