The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contracted the Malaria Elimination Initiative to write 5 background papers to inform their developing strategy. The topics of the papers are on; the historical use of mass drug administration and mass chemoprophylaxis in order to reduce malaria transmission; how to prevent importation of malaria; what gaps and challenged faced with IT systems that are in use for malaria surveillance; what are program management challenges and solutions in malaria elimination; and lastly a paper on financing malaria elimination. All background papers will be published in 2014.