Using Cell Phones to Track Malaria in Kenya

Harvard researchers found they could track the spread of malaria in Kenya using phone calls and text messages from 15 million cell phones. “Before mobile phones, we had proxies for human travel, like road networks, census data and small-scale GPS studies,” said study author Caroline Buckee. Buckee and colleagues used cell phone records from June 2008 and June 2009 to track the timing and origin of calls and texts among 15 million Kenyan cell phone subscribers. They then compared the volume of subscribers in a particular region to that region’s known malaria prevalence. By studying networks of human and parasite movement, the team could then determine primary sources of malaria and who was most likely to become infected. The results, published Thursday in the journal Science, suggest that malaria transmission within Kenya is dominated by travel from Lake Victoria on the country’s western edge to the more central capital city of Nairobi. And human carriers of the malaria parasite, who may not show symptoms, far outpace the flying limits of mosquitoes in endemic regions.

This is a big issue because malaria is killing off hundreds of people. The fact that they can now use cell phones to track the virus and figure out where it is going is just phenomenal to me. This way, travelers are more unlikely to get the virus when the go to visit Kenya, and they can focus on more of what they planned to do out there. Technology is increasing rapidly, and it is for the better in this case!

SOURCE
abcnews.com