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BBC News: Big data 'can stop malaria outbreaks before they start'

MOCRU

A ground-breaking study in Bangladesh co-lead by Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU) has found that using data from mobile phone networks to track the movement of people across the country can help predict where outbreaks of diseases such as malaria are likely to occur, enabling health authorities to take preventative measures.

Rural village

Head of Epidemiology, Richard Maude, was co-PI for the study and designed it together with co-PI Caroline Buckee from Harvard University. MORU Epidemiology and longstanding MORU collaborators from Chittagong Medical College (CMC) led by co-PI Md Amir Hossain set up and ran the field studies to collect the demographic and travel surveys and blood samples from people with malaria, negotiated permissions to access the cellphone data and liaised with the partners in Bangladesh including the National Malaria Elimination Programme who contributed national surveillance data to the project. 

Read more (Nuffield Department of Tropical Medicine & Global Health website)

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