Half the world population lives at risk of malaria, a disease that kills 1.2 million people each year. Ninety percent of those deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa.
Malaria has affected Africa disproportionately more than in any other part of the world, though other areas, including Pakistan and Afghanistan, face a growing challenge to contain a mosquito-borne illness that now has resistance to the medicines used to treat malaria and to the pesticides used to kill mosquitoes.
For five years, Tatem and Smith have collaborated with a team of scientists, geographers, statisticians and on-the-ground health workers to create a single worldwide database for mapping and modeling P. falciparum transmission. Their assessments in The Lancet Series are based on malaria’s regional intrinsic transmission, the disease’s toll on crippling health systems and the levels in which population movement help spread malaria across borders. Tatem and Smith’s analysis may give the public health community a tool it needs to most effectively allocate financial and technical support for regions whose citizens suffer with the disease.Half the world population lives at risk of malaria, a disease that kills 1.2 million people each year. …

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