Oral Presentation First Malaria World Congress 2018

Mapping human mobility for malaria elimination planning (#20)

Caroline Buckee 1
  1. Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, United States
As malaria transmission declines in countries aiming for elimination, transmission becomes increasingly patchy, and control programs must reduce transmission in remaining foci while protecting previously endemic regions from imported infections. Monitoring the spread of malaria parasites from transmission foci to the rest of the country is a challenge that requires more nuanced insights than standard surveillance can provide. Here, I discuss our studies that use new sources of information from mobile phones and satellite data with parasite genomic information and travel surveys. I describe the strengths and weaknesses of each data source with respect to routine surveillance and modeling, and the added benefit of combining data sets to identify sources and sinks of transmission on a national scale, as well as discussing future directions of this work.