Malaria Atlas Project
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The Malaria Atlas Project, abbreviated as MAP, is a non-profit project funded for five years by the Wellcome Trust, UK.[1] MAP is a joint project between the Malaria Public Health & Epidemiology Group, Centre for Geographic Medicine, Kenya and the Spatial Ecology & Epidemiology Group, University of Oxford, UK, with collaborating nodes in America and Asia Pacific Region.
The main objective of this project is to develop a detailed model of the spatial limits of Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax malaria at a global scale and its endemicity within this range. The last attempt to map malaria risks worldwide was in the 1960s. For many areas of the world this, unfortunately, still represents the best information on malaria risk. The project aims to map, model and project populations at risk of malaria to provide a more contemporary and robust means to assess current and future malaria disease burden.
These first stages of MAP, which will last to the end of 2008, are data acquisition and archive. The various mechanisms by which we have assembled the largest ever database of malaria parasite rate (PR) data have been described[2]. MAP intends to release in the public-domain all data collected during the project for which permission to disseminate has been granted. The first full release of the parasite rate data is scheduled for June 2009 to enable global searches to be comprehensive and time for our endemicity maps to be tested and reviewed.
MAP has recently released in the public domain the new global spatial limits of P. falciparum malaria (no risk, unstable risk and stable risk) in parallel with the publication of a detailed description of their derivation[3]. Please visit the MAP website for data and news of project extensions into mapping the global distribution of the dominant Anopheles vectors of human malaria.
[edit] References
- ^ Hay SI, Snow RW (2006). "The Malaria Atlas Project: Developing Global Maps of Malaria Risk.". PLoS Medicine 3 (12): e473. doi:.
- ^ Guerra CA, Hay SI, Lucioparedes LS, Gikandi P, Tatem AJ, Noor AM, Snow RW (2007). "Assembling a global database of malaria parasite prevalence for the Malaria Atlas Project.". Malaria Journal 6: 17. doi:.
- ^ Guerra CA, Gikandi PW, Tatem AJ, Noor AM, Smith DL, Hay SI, Snow RW (2008). "The limits and intensity of Plasmodium falciparum transmission: implications for malaria control and elimination worldwide.". PLoS Medicine 5 (2): e38. doi:.
