Reducing the Burden of Malaria by Targeting Hotspots of Malaria Transmission (REDHOT)

Teun Bousema of Radboud University in the Netherlands proposed that geographic "hotspots" of malaria disease drive local transmission, and therefore that interventions would most efficiently be deployed if they targeted these hotspots. This project's Phase I research demonstrated that hotspots of malaria transmission are present at all levels of endemicity and can be sensitively detected by serological markers of malaria exposure. In Phase II, Bousema and colleagues will define hotspots of malaria transmission in Africa in a site of moderate endemicity in Mali and in the low endemicity highlands in Kenya. Once hotspots are detected, they will be targeted with a combination of those interventions deemed most efficacious based on a mathematical simulation, the goal being to locally interrupt malaria transmission.