Management of patients with giardiasis often proves to be difficult due to problems related to accurate diagnosis, lack of knowledge concerning pathophysiology and a lack of fully effective chemotherapeutic agents (8,10,11). Research into the treatment of giardiasis has been limited by the lack of suitable laboratory models. All the existing drugs were developed for other infectious diseases and subsequently found empirically to be active against Giardia intestinalis. In this paper we briefly review the existing drugs and their deficiencies and discuss some of our current research which is designed to effect improvements in the therapy of infected humans, particularly children.