Here we describe the construction of a representative YAC library for the human malarial parasitePlasmodium vivax.AsP. vivaxcannot be maintained continuously under laboratory conditions, theP. vivaxDNA necessary for the library construction was isolated from a single human patient presenting himself with vivax malaria to a local hospital in the Brazilian Amazon. Thus, this YAC library is the first of its kind to be generated from patient-derived material. The YAC library consists of 560 clones with an average insert size of 180 kb. Of 9 publishedP. vivaxgenes, 8 were found to be present in the library. In addition, 12P. vivaxtelomeric YAC clones were identified.