Health | Science

24 Mar 09

Oxford researchers have created a new global map of malaria which will help curb the disease in the future

Over 70 per cent of the 2.4 billion people at risk from the most deadly form of malaria live in areas where the obstacles to malaria control are relatively small, a new global map of malaria risk has revealed in work led by Oxford University scientists.

The new global map of malaria was released by the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP), a multinational team of researchers funded by the Wellcome Trust. In a study published today in PLoS Medicine, the researchers show how severe the risks of contracting malaria are worldwide.

Dr Simon Hay of Oxford’s Department of Zoology, who led the research, said: ‘These maps represent the culmination of two years’ work by the Malaria Atlas Project team with contributions made from over 200 scientists and malaria control groups across the world, analysed with state of the art mathematical modelling and spatial computing skills. Never before has this been attempted using empirical data at this scale and the product represents an important benchmark of malaria endemicity in 2007.’

This work shows that over 70 per cent of the 2.4 billion people at some risk of infection with Plasmodium falciparum live in areas of unstable or low endemic risk, where the technical obstacles to malaria control are relatively small.

The maps also show that almost all populations at medium and high levels of risk live in sub-Saharan Africa where the disease, death and disability burdens from P. falciparum malaria remain high.

Professor Bob Snow from the University of Oxford and the Kenyan Medical Research Institute, who heads the MAP group in Kenya, said: ‘Charting the future success of the international effort to control and eliminate malaria requires a map of the present-day situation which, when systematically updated, will indicate the progress achieved in ten, twenty and thirty years’ time. Rather than guessing what’s happened, the MAP’s intention has been to record, model and map developments, giving donors and national governments an evidence-based perspective on what their investments have achieved.’

‘The Malaria Atlas Project will offer a valuable resource to all those involved in malaria control,’ said Sir Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust. ‘By making its data freely available, we can maximise its usage and impact, and help curb this devastating disease.’

One of the first uses for this new global map, will be to re-evaluate the estimates of the global incidence of clinical P. falciparum malaria made by the research group in 2005. Also high on their list of priorities is a similar mapping exercise for the distribution and intensity of infection by another malaria parasite, P. vivax, a species causing chronic illness in millions of people outside of Africa, that has been largely neglected by the research community.