The Miraculous Fever Tree: malaria, medicine and the cure that changed the world Fiammetta Rocco HarperCollins, 348pp, £16.99 ISBN 0002572028

Each second of every day, three people become infected with the malaria parasite. A child dies from the disease every 15 seconds. Malaria, meaning bad air in Italian, was so named because of the historical belief that it was caused by malignant swamp vapours. We now know the disease is caused by tiny blood parasites that are transmitted by Anopheles mosquitoes, which breed in stagnant water.

Malaria remains one of the greatest causes of human suffering. Yet most pharmaceutical companies do not consider the disease worthy of their attention. Malaria's 500 million sufferers simply don't have enough money to interest big business. Having spent my entire working life looking for cures for tropical diseases, I - like many others - have found the industry's position irksome. However, is the vitriolic criticism aimed at pharmaceutical giants really justified? To my knowledge, Rentokil doesn't engage in philanthropic pest control in rural Africa, where rodents transmit a multitude of human infectious diseases. Anglia Water hasn't volunteered to purify polluted wells in the Sudan. Should drugs companies be expected to behave differently?

Tropical diseases are a social problem. Some people argue that infectious diseases curb population growth. But in fact, less than 1 per cent of those affected by malaria die. Most are routinely incapacitated by horrible, debilitating fevers lasting for days at a time. The top American academic Jeffrey Sachs has calculated that reducing malaria by 10 per cent in countries severely affected by the disease would stimulate economic growth by 0.3 per cent. Eradication would sustainably boost growth by 3.2 per cent per annum. Effective measures to expunge the worst infectious diseases from Africa would have a hugely positive influence on economic development. Saving life is, paradoxically, the surest way to check fertility. Improved hygiene, water sanitation and basic health education are needed for long-term progress. Drugs can offer a short-term fix.

Given that the pharmaceutical industry is uninterested in tropical diseases, it is vital that we find new means to develop essential medicines. The charity Medecins Sans Frontieres is aggressively pursuing its "Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative", searching for innovative ways to develop drugs at a fraction of the industry quoted cost (estimated at a staggering $800m to bring each new product to the market place). Bill Gates currently bankrolls a sizeable part of the world's research into tropical disease. Tragically, Gates - maligned as a monopolist in his day job - has even fewer rivals in his charitable work. The hundreds of millions invested by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are welcome but not enough. The world needs at least $2bn each year to sustain malaria control.

Fiammetta Rocco's The Miraculous Fever Tree is an erudite account of the history of malaria, and offers an alternative solution to treating the disease. A company called Pharmakina, based in war-torn eastern Congo, grows Cinchona trees from which the ancient anti-malarial drug quinine is recovered. Pharmakina produces the compound cheaply, and sells it at affordable prices. Mainstream drugs companies may not bother with anything that won't make them billions, but there are many people for whom small, but tidy, profits still represent good business.

Mark Honigsbaum's The Fever Trail (2001) covered much of the same ground, centring on the buccaneering exploits of daring explorers who smuggled Cinchona seeds out of 19th-century Peru in the name of European imperialism. Rocco has chosen a more scholarly approach, sourcing, for example, Vatican archives and rare transcripts of Spanish Jesuit settlers in the New World. The well-known 17th-century story from which the Cinchona tree takes its name is exposed as apocryphal. The Countess of Chinchon, wife of the viceroy of Peru, and supposedly the first European to receive the cure, never actually had malaria.

Rocco lightens her account with personal reflections on the pervasive impact of malaria. Hers is as good an account of the social and historic consequences of the disease as any. However, it is the ray of hope suggested by Pharmakina that is the book's great insight. The future of malaria, not its history, needs all our attention.

Michael Barrett is a reader in tropical diseases at the University of Glasgow

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