Celebrating Zambia’s innovative location and data visualization tools to help eliminate malaria
By: Hannah Judge
Today, I was thrilled to see Jonathan Drummey of PATH called to the stage at the Geospatial World Excellence Awards ceremony to accept an award for the Visualize No Malaria initiative, a collaboration that Mapbox has been a proud partner of since 2017.
For the past three days, I’ve been in Amsterdam at the 2019 Geospatial World Forum discussing the future of location. On Wednesday I gave a presentation showcasing how Mapbox customers and partners like PATH are using location analytics to improve decision making. To see Visualize No Malaria recognized for the well-deserved honor of “exemplary innovations and practices in the global geospatial industry” is a testimony to the power of using location data to advance public health and other sustainable development goals.
How Visualize No Malaria uses data to guide the elimination of malaria
Despite improvements in disease surveillance and data collection tools, it is often still difficult for users of health intelligence systems to generate insights or provide actionable feedback to health workers on the ground. The government of Zambia and PATH started the Visualize No Malaria (VNM) initiative in 2015 to address these issues. Working with a coalition of private sector partners including the Tableau Foundation, Mapbox, Twillio.org, Alteryx, Exasol, Datablick, Slalom, and DigitalGlobe, VNM has created some of the most innovative, and user-focused tools for health data management, analysis, reporting, and decision-making.
The tools and data created for VNM give officials across all levels of the health system the flexibility to combine data from multiple sources, analyze it, and generate insights within user-friendly dashboards. These dashboards allow them to create data-informed decisions on where to deploy lifesaving resources — like ensuring mosquito nets reach the right places at the right time and that expensive medications don’t expire on the shelf.
While PATH and technology partners provide regular in-person and virtual training, the health workers on the ground in Zambia are driving the development of these tools. PATH, in partnership with the Ministry of Health, has also trained over 3,200 community health workers who are the frontline of the national disease surveillance system. Already, improved collection and use of data has contributed to a 92 percent reduction in malaria deaths and an 88 percent reduction in malaria cases in Zambia’s Southern Province between 2014 and 2017.
Congratulations to PATH, the Zambia Ministry of Health, and the entire VNM partnership for today’s award — let’s continue showing how collaborative, user-driven innovation can shape technology into tools to transform the lives of millions.
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Visualize No Malaria wins Geospatial World Excellence Award was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.