Using satellite enumeration for smart IRS planning

By Aniset Kamanga & Andy Prinsen on June 15, 2014 in Health Data Systems, Malaria, News

Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) is one of the most effective tools in the fight against malaria. In Zambia, technicians enter dwellings once per year and spray the wall surfaces of buildings with insecticides that kill mosquitos who land on the walls and deter others from entering. Since mosquitoes feed in the evening and at night when humans are indoors, the spraying can greatly reduce the number of bites that occur.

But in rural areas like Zambia’s Luapula and Central Provinces, it is unclear how many dwellings exist, and where those dwellings are located. Without this information, deciding where to spray the insecticides is very difficult, the planners having no way to effectively target IRS to houses in areas of the highest malaria burden. While IRS remains one of the most effective tools for fighting malaria, the pesticides are expensive and must be targeted effectively.

So how to correct for this information gap? How to find out where exactly these dwellings are located so that they can be targeted effectively? Historically, if dwelling enumeration was done, it was done on foot, enumerators visiting villages in person, identifying houses visually and noting the GPS coordinates with a handheld device. It’s not hard to imagine that this method is extremely time-consuming and labor-intensive – especially for a large-scale enumeration. Zambia’s Ministry of Health (MOH), Ministry of Community Development Mother and Child Health (MCDMCH) and Akros technicians found a solution that is at the same time cost-effective and accurate, providing the pinpoint sort of data required for a more effective IRS implementation.