Global malaria map released

More than 2.3 billion people, or about 35% percent of the world’s population, live in areas where there is risk of a deadly form of malaria, according to a spatial distribution map published in PLoS Medicine.

Malaria is a parasitic disease that occurs in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. 500 million cases of malaria occur every year, and one million people, mostly children living in sub-Saharan Africa, die as a result. The parasite mainly responsible for these deaths—Plasmodium falciparum—is transmitted to people through the bites of infected Anopheles mosquitoes.

An accurate spatial description of malaria risk is critical in guiding campaigns to control the disease. To construct their map, Robert W. Snow and colleagues at the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP)– a collaboration between the Kenyan Medical Research Institute and the University of Oxford, funded by the Wellcome Trust –collected information including nationally reported data on malaria cases, travel advisories, and surveys in several thousand communities across 87 countries. They also incorporated information about climatic conditions that affect the parasite’s life cycle and consequently the likelihood of active transmission. For example, below a certain temperature, infected mosquitoes reach the end of their natural life span before the parasite has had time to develop into a stage that can infect humans, which means that malaria transmission does not occur.

The map not only shows areas of high P. falciparum risk, but also provides an estimate of the number of people who are living in areas where malaria transmission is low, and where it should be possible to use existing control strategies to eliminate the parasite. In addition, it identifies large regions of Africa where P. falciparum might be more amenable to elimination than previously thought.-Public Library of Science

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