With 35% of the world’s population exposed, more than 200 million of cases and about one million of deaths each year - occurring mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa - malaria is a major public health problem. It is also linked to poverty and is a problem for economic and human development.   Urbanization, currently increasing so fast that near 60% of the world’s population will live in cities by 2030 and in 2040, half of the Africa’s population will live in urban settings.

Many studies have reported the existence of malaria transmission in urban areas. Even if levels are usually lower than those in peri-urban and rural places, the lower levels of acquired immunity and the importance of the exposed human population make urban malaria to be considered as an emerging health problem of major importance in Africa.   In this context, EEOS Malaria project aims at defining the characteristics of a mapping service of malaria risk in urban areas.

This project has two components:
– Societal: the first user is the Health Department of the French Army which, in the objective to evaluate malaria risk or efficacy of prophylactic devices, needs to get tools to evaluate and predict transmission levels in the places visited by the troops. In a second step, operational result could also benefit to local authorities / governments in charge of the fight against malaria.
– Technical and scientific: this project initializes a service in the sub-Sahelian belt and that may be extended to other cities of this region and eventually to the equatorial zone and in South America. In addition, the added value of the use use of very high resolution image Pleiade-like) is tested in the field of malaria modelling.   The objective of EEOS-Malaria is to achieve the definition of a commercial service. This implies that the products (maps, geospatial data and statistics) are clearly specified, especially with a deep commitment in terms of quality and precision e. g. spatial and temporal resolution, accuracy and scale.   The service is multi-levels, with:

• A routine method for drawing maps for health risk management, outside of any emergency situation, that could to be realized in a few weeks or months.
• An emergency mode, to achieve the products within a very short time (a few days) to prepare a deployment of resources and personnel in an area.
• A web mode, where products would be made available through a web service seller.   The production process is based on a specific protocol that takes into account:
  – constraints for data supply,
  – methods and algorithms used for data processing,
  – methods of quality assessment,
  – necessary adaptations (format …) for commercialization.   The CNES technical and scientific support can provide expertise and R&D results coming from several years of experience and data collection, that allows reaching nowadays those stages of prototyping and industrialization.