Fathom’s flood data supports the Malaria Atlas Project’s climate risk initiative in Africa

How does flooding impact malaria risk in Africa? With climate change modifying flood risk, what subsequent effect will this have on malaria control? These are the questions the Malaria Atlas Project was looking to investigate when they approached global flood risk intelligence firm Fathom.

Fathom has been appointed by the Malaria Atlas Project, based at the Kids Research Institute Australia, to provide flood risk data for the entire African continent for the present day and future climate scenarios up to the year 2100.

Using Fathom’s award-winning data, and with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the project is investigating topics such as the impact of flooding on transport infrastructure used to provision medical services to remote communities, disruption to malaria control efforts like mass distribution of insecticidal bed nets, and how future flood risk evolution will influence mosquito breeding-site distribution.

Professor Peter Gething, co-head of the Malaria Atlas Project, said:

“Fathom’s consistent, full-coverage view of flood risk is proving indispensable for analyzing malaria transmission in flood prone areas of Africa, and ensuring the continent can develop long-term, resilient infrastructure strategies.”

Dr Andrew Smith, COO and Co-Founder at Fathom, said:

“It’s great to see our data contributing to such a meaningful initiative, supporting the Malaria Atlas Project in addressing one of the most pressing health challenges in the world today.  By scrutinizing the relationship between climate change-induced flooding and malaria risk in Africa, we hope the project will support informed decision making to keep communities safe.”

With Fathom’s data already delivered, the primary analytics phase has now concluded. A report released in conjunction with Boston Consulting Group explores the main findings of the initiative, such as:

• climate change could cause more than 550,000 additional malaria deaths by 2050
• 1.3 billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa are expected to live in places where malaria eradication will become harder under climate change in the late 2040s, representing 75% of the expected population.
• 33 countries have areas that will require an extreme (>50%) increase in the effort needed to eradicate malaria

Read the full report here.

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