UC BERKELEY AUTHOR: John Marshall, Wu SL
DATE OF PUBLICATION: May 2018
REGION: Africa
REFERENCE: Marshall JM, Wu SL, Sanchez C HM, Kiware SS, Mdhlovu M, Ouédraogo AL, Touré MB, Sturrock HJ, Ghani AC, Ferguson NM
doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-26023-1.
SUMMARY/ABSTRACT:
As Africa-wide malaria prevalence declines, an understanding of human movement
patterns is essential to inform how best to target interventions. We fitted
movement models to trip data from surveys conducted at 3-5 sites throughout each
of Mali, Burkina Faso, Zambia and Tanzania. Two models were compared in terms of
their ability to predict the observed movement patterns – a gravity model, in
which movement rates between pairs of locations increase with population size and
decrease with distance, and a radiation model, in which travelers are
cumulatively “absorbed” as they move outwards from their origin of travel. The
gravity model provided a better fit to the data overall and for travel to large
populations, while the radiation model provided a better fit for nearby
populations. One strength of the data set was that trips could be categorized
according to traveler group – namely, women traveling with children in all survey
countries and youth workers in Mali. For gravity models fitted to data specific
to these groups, youth workers were found to have a higher travel frequency to
large population centers, and women traveling with children a lower frequency.
These models may help predict the spatial transmission of malaria parasites and
inform strategies to control their spread.
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