Hitting a Moving Target: A Model for Malaria Elimination in the Presence of Population Movement.

ABSTRACT: South Africa is committed to eliminating malaria with a goal of zero local transmission by 2018. Malaria elimination strategies may be unsuccessful if they focus only on vector biology, and ignore the mobility patterns of humans, particularly where the majority of infections are imported. In the first study in Mpumalanga Province in South Africa designed for this purpose, a metapopulation model is developed to assess the impact of their proposed elimination-focused policy interventions. A stochastic, non-linear, ordinary-differential equation model is fitted to malaria data from Mpumalanga and neighbouring Maputo Province in Mozambique. Further scaling-up of vector control is predicted to lead to a minimal reduction in local infections, while mass drug administration and focal screening an

SUBMITTER: Silal SP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4686217 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature