Border malaria

This is an active Deep Dive and we welcome your contributions! If you are currently involved or planning research activities on Border malaria please contact MESA (mesa@isglobal.org) or add your project to the database.

——

Border malaria is defined as the malaria transmission or potential for transmission that takes place across or along borders between countries sharing a land border and is frequently cited as a challenge to malaria elimination. Countries nearing elimination often find their last few cases occurring along international borders with countries that have not achieved substantial reductions in malaria transmission [ref]. 

In order to characterize border malaria and understand the factors that contribute to transmission and identify the best ways to address them, an Evidence review group (ERG) on Border Malaria was held in May 2018 [ref]. 

This deep dive aims to review ongoing and closed projects that identify work on some aspects of border malaria. Although results for most of the projects are largely not available yet, understanding this landscape affords the ERG three opportunities: one is to realize what data are pending that could inform strategy and policy; the second is, where necessary, to flag issues that should be addressed within emerging research projects; and the third, to note where gaps are identified in the context of their own discussions.