How Cell-Phone Data Could Slow the Spread of Malaria. Location data suggests a better way to fight a disease that kills a million people a year

Malaria contacts: Tracking people using data from cell phones, like this one used by a man at a Nairobi bus station, can help determine where to focus malaria-control programs.
Alex Kamweru

Researchers have mapped precisely how human travel affects the spread of malaria in Kenya by using cell-phone location data. The effort is the largest-ever to use cell-phone data as an epidemiological tool.

The study captured the anonymized travel habits of nearly 15 million Kenyans between June 2008 and June 2009. Their movements were gleaned from 11,920 cell towers. The data was then mapped against the incidence of malaria as recorded by health officials.

The results made clear that malaria outbreaks during that period began in Kenya's Lake Victoria region and spread east toward the capital of Nairobi. This suggests that health officials could avert transmissions by focusing their efforts in the lake region, says Caroline Buckee, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health and one of the authors of the study, which is being published today in the journal Science.

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