Role of Platelets in Malaria Treatment?

(From ABC news)
Platelets in human blood could hold the key to better treatment.
Scientists at Tasmania's Menzies Research Institute have made a breakthrough they hope will lead to new treatments for malaria.
Researchers in Hobart have discovered that platelets in human blood kill the malaria parasite during the early stages of infection.
While platelets are naturally occurring, their levels in the body drop quickly when a person gets malaria.
They have found platelets can kill the malaria parasite by binding to red blood cells.The breakthrough follows more than six years of research.
Senior researcher Dr Brendan McMorran says about half a million people die of malaria each year.
"Most of the drugs that we use today are becoming useless because of the problem of drug resistance, similar way to a lot of bacteria developing antibiotic resistance," he said. "The malaria parasite, there's a lot of parasites out there now that are very resistant to most of the drugs that we can use to treat them.
"Malaria is a major problem in the world and it's becoming more and more of a serious problem." Dr McMorran says the next step will be securing funding to develop treatments.

What are platelets? - They are found in the human blood. They are what makes your wound to immediately stop bleeding when you cut yourself.
What are Red blood cells (RBC)? They are bigger than platelets. They carry oxygen around the body. The malaria parasite goes into RBC and infects them.
What the article is saying is that they believe platelets will kill off the RBCs infected with the malaria parasite. It is still in early phases of study. Will take more than ten years before any new treatments are developed. Currently the study is done in mice.