Supporting malaria elimination for 60 million people
Joining Tableau, Exasol, and Alteryx to scale our commitment to Visualize No Malaria efforts in sub-Saharan Africa
Today, we joined our Visualize No Malaria partners PATH, Tableau, Exasol, and Alteryx in announcing a collective $4.3 million technology contribution over the next three years to help governments eliminate malaria for an estimated 60 million at-risk people in up to six sub-Saharan Africa countries.
“Our company’s roots began with global development projects in Afghanistan, Congo, Haiti, and the United States, so the mission of Visualize No Malaria is very close to our hearts. We built these tools to help people understand context in data so they can solve problems. It’s incredible to see people use these platforms to literally save lives.” — Eric Gundersen, Mapbox CEO
Mapbox is scaling up our partnership with Visualize No Malaria to include more detailed data layers with Enterprise Boundaries and on-premises, offline capability with Mapbox Atlas, in addition to our ongoing in-person and remote technical support and training.
This new commitment to PATH, a global organization dedicated to accelerating health equity, expands on the early success of the Visualize No Malaria initiative and was announced at the World Malaria Day 2019 event hosted by the RBM Partnership to End Malaria in partnership with the City of Paris and the French government.
A growing collaboration
Originally launched in 2015 as a collaboration between PATH, Tableau Foundation, and the Zambian Ministry of Health, the Visualize No Malaria digital technologies make real-time, actionable data about malaria available to everyone from national and district-level health officials to frontline health workers. Mapbox joined the initiative as a technology partner in 2016, collaborating with the OpenStreetMap community to map millions of buildings across malaria-endemic countries and supporting the development of additional spatial data and map-based data visualizations within the Visualize No Malaria dashboards.
With this latest commitment, PATH will support national governments and regional organizations across sub-Saharan Africa to improve the use of real-time data and analytics to bolster decision-making around malaria elimination efforts. These data-informed insights allow officials to determine where and how to deploy resources to respond most effectively in fighting disease. The investment will also provide training to hundreds of frontline health workers and officials on how to use data to tackle malaria and other diseases.
Tools and data to keep ahead of disease
The combination of improved use of data with other malaria control efforts has resulted in the Zambian government reducing reported malaria cases by 85 percent and malaria-related deaths by 92 percent across a population of 1.8 million people in the country’s Southern Province.
Reducing the amount of time to see and understand health data from months to hours, health officials can now make faster decisions about the best ways to deploy a mix of interventions, including drug delivery, indoor residual spraying, bed net distribution, and other proven techniques to most effectively respond to existing cases and prevent new ones. In low-burden areas, this approach has proven to be a cost-effective way for governments to control malaria, and in high-burden areas, it could be an important differentiator in creating and sustaining steep drops in disease incidence.
“Successful malaria elimination programs require accurate data that moves faster than the disease itself — to help shorten the distance and time it takes to find and treat cases, and even to predict risk and direct resources before cases occur.” — Steve Davis, President and CEO of PATH
The Visualize No Malaria tools and approach are currently being replicated in Senegal, which has seen a similar 60 percent drop in reported malaria cases across a northern Senegal population of 1.8 million in just two years, and the initiative is set to expand in Senegal and neighboring countries under this new commitment by partners.
“With this new commitment, we can increase the number of districts where we use the Visualize No Malaria stack and make informed, real-time decisions across the nation, as well as support our cross-border collaboration with The Gambia.” — Dr. Doudou Séne, Director of Senegal’s National Malaria Control Program
Building a health intelligence ecosystem
The technology partners who have joined together in this commitment represent much of the core architecture behind the Visualize No Malaria data system:
- Tableau Foundation is contributing funds and software licenses that form the main foundation of the Visualize No Malaria dashboards in Tableau.
- Alteryx is contributing their data science and analytics engine as well as on-site training in Africa.
- Exasol’s in-memory analytics database compresses massive amounts of data and serves them up fast in low-resource, lower-bandwidth settings.
- Mapbox powers the extended mapping tools and geospatial data for interactive maps within the Visualize No Malaria dashboards, as well as providing remote and on-site technical training and now testing Mapbox Atlas to support PATH’s offline mapping needs.
Want to learn more about Visualize No Malaria? Join PATH’s webinar on April 30th (9am PST) with Jonathan Drummey, PATH visualization specialist.
Are you using spatial data to help improve health outcomes? Connect with the Mapbox Community team to explore how we can partner to support your work.
