What 115 years of data tells us about Africa’s battle with malaria past and present

Abstract

It is difficult to accurately measure the number of people who get malaria each year. This is because the malaria symptoms are shared with many other diseases that lead to death or illness, especially among young children. However, there is a measure of malaria that is precise. Testing for the malaria parasite among large numbers of people provides a Parasite Rate, a useful measure of the quantity of malaria in any given area. Surveys are done on a known number of people by malaria control programmes, non-governmental organisations and researchers. Although they don’t tell us how many people are sick, the number of infected people in an area is indicated. The Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health at the University of Oxford spent the last 21 years tracking down malaria survey reports done across Africa. The greatest challenge was that they were mostly hidden in old government archives or curated by the World Health Organisation. Most of the records were either poorly stored, burnt or were missing.

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