Africa
Our work in Africa includes both malaria elimination efforts and projects focused on antibiotic use through the Global Antibiotic Resistance Partnership (GARP).
In Kenya, the National Working Group for GARP has endorsed and will support a number of research activities aimed at collecting baseline data on aspects of economic and behavioral drivers of antibiotic use in hospitals, the community and within livestock production, levels and types of consumption at various dispensing points, and the presence of antibiotic resistant bacteria in livestock products. As this necessary information for policy development is largely absent in Kenya, GARP is focused on filling key data gaps using innovative pilot studies conducted with leading research institutions and civil society organizations. Targeted project sites range from the bureaucratic offices of the Ministries of Health in the country's capital, Nairobi, to district hospitals in the rural western provinces, urban slum settlements, and the farming communities of the central highlands.
In Zanzibar, CDDEP researchers are helping determine if malaria elimination is possible through interesting new data sources. Anonymous mobile phone records provide valuable information on human movement patterns in areas that are typically data-sparse. Estimates of human movement patterns from Zanzibar to mainland Tanzania suggest that imported malaria risk from this group is heterogeneously distributed; a few people account for most of the risk for imported malaria. In combination with spatial data on malaria endemicity and transmission models, movement patterns derived from phone records can inform on the likely sources and rates of malaria importation. Such information is important for assessing the feasibility of malaria elimination and planning an elimination campaign.
