Charting Malaria’s Demise
Eliza Barclay
The great 20th century battle against malaria, one of the most widespread and intractable infectious diseases on the planet, began in the 1940s, with famously mixed results. While 100 countries, like the United States, were able to successfully eradicate it, insecticide-spraying initiatives failed or never reached many of the worst affected areas, namely sub-Saharan Africa.
Today the vector-borne disease remains endemic in more than 100 countries, with some 247 million cases annually, though it is largely preventable and treatable. In 2007, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation helped mobilize a new funding and research effort to eradicate the disease. But many questions remain about how to do it. Among the challenges of designing public interventions to vanquish malaria once and for all is the dearth of well-organized data on which regions are at risk, and to what extent.
Most countries conduct prevalence surveys on the deadliest parasite that causes malaria, Plasmodium falciparum, to estimate how to extend prevention and treatment. But there have been next to no "risk maps" showing the scope of the problem worldwide that can guide policy-makers and donors in developing regional strategies.
