Building a community of malaria modelers, analysts, and partners

This presentation will provide an overview of the current malaria situation in Bangladesh and the country's progress towards elimination, highlighting major achievements as well as the epidemiological, geographical, operational and vector-related challenges that characterize the last mile of elimination. Particular emphasis will be placed on the evolving role of surveillance and data analytics in programme decision-making. The presentation will demonstrate how case-based surveillance, case investigation, focus identification and classification, GIS-based mapping, spatial and temporal analysis, entomological information and other programme data can be integrated to identify transmission risks, prioritize high-risk locations and populations, guide Focus Investigation and Focus Response, and optimize the allocation of limited programme resources. The presentation will also highlight the importance of timely conversion of surveillance information into operational action and the need to sustain surveillance intensity even when malaria incidence becomes very low. Finally, the presentation will draw lessons from Bangladesh's experience that may be relevant to malaria elimination and control programmes in Africa and other endemic regions. These lessons will focus on the importance of moving from aggregate case reporting towards case-based and spatially informed surveillance; linking every detected case with an epidemiological investigation; using local-level data to guide targeted interventions; integrating epidemiological, GIS and entomological intelligence; maintaining preparedness for imported malaria and prevention of re-establishment; and strengthening the capacity of health systems and local programme teams to translate data into timely action. The overarching message will be that the last mile of malaria elimination is fundamentally a data-driven and response-driven endeavour: finding every case, understanding every transmission event, responding to every focus and maintaining the surveillance capacity required to prevent malaria from returning. This presentation is in English and registered participants can activate the CAPTIONS feature on Zoom for translation in their language of choice.

This hackathon will be conducted in French. The session will focus on using R to process and visualize raster data, following up on the previous session on mapping vector data. Participants will explore the structure and characteristics of raster data and learn practical workflows for loading, exploring, visualizing, reprojecting, cropping, masking, aggregating, resampling, and performing calculations on raster data using R. The session will use malaria-related rasters, including data on population, prevalence of the Plasmodium falciparum parasite, and precipitation, to demonstrate how raster layers can be processed, combined, and synthesized for epidemiological and environmental analyses. Participants will also explore the extraction of spatial information, the management of multiband raster layers, and conversion between vector and raster formats through hands-on exercises designed to reinforce the concepts covered throughout the session.