One of the biggest challenges facing the African countries
considering malaria elimination is the ongoing threat of
imported infections between different regions within a
country and across borders. In highly endemic regions
almost everyone in the population has parasites and most
have no symptoms. Asymptomatic individuals are therefore
reservoirs of infection that can carry parasites when they
travel and contribute to transmission in endemic regions, or
renew transmission in areas that remain vulnerable to
malaria following control. As transportation infrastructure
across Africa improves, the role of importation of parasites
carried by asymptomatic people becomes increasingly
important, particularly in countries with spatially heterogeneous
transmission settings. Tools for understanding
human mobility are currently limited, but the near ubiquity
of mobile phones in many malaria-endemic countries offers
a new way to examine national population dynamics on an
unprecedented scale