The Use of Routine Collected Data to Define Disease Importation and Target Intervention

Thomas Churcher of Imperial College London in the United Kingdom will develop an analytical method to more accurately determine the origin of new cases of malaria in regions with low levels of the disease, which is critical for elimination efforts. Current methods are unreliable as there are no standardized criteria and they often rely solely on interviews. They will use routinely collected travel history data and disease maps to develop rigorous methods for estimating whether a case of malaria is either acquired locally or imported from another region. The accuracy of their method will be tested by comparing it with available data from Swaziland.