Estimating the global clinical burden of Plasmodium falciparum malaria in 2007.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The epidemiology of malaria makes surveillance-based methods of estimating its disease burden problematic. Cartographic approaches have provided alternative malaria burden estimates, but there remains widespread misunderstanding about their derivation and fidelity. The aims of this study are to present a new cartographic technique and its application for deriving global clinical burden estimates of Plasmodium falciparum malaria for 2007, and to compare these estimates and their likely precision with those derived under existing surveillance-based approaches.

Methods and findings

In seven of the 87 countries endemic for P. falciparum malaria, the health reporting infrastructure was deemed sufficiently rigorous for case reports to be used verbatim. In the remaining

SUBMITTER: Hay SI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2885984 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature