Tanzania-Zanzibar Transmission
Significant achievements have been made in Zanzibar in reducing the burden of malaria. However, the region has not been able to achieve malaria elimination. We find that despite existing excellent control efforts, there is ample evidence for gene flow and importation between Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania. This study highlights the challenges for elimination campaigns in addressing sink-source dynamics and the difficulties of blocking genetic corridors, which in theory should lead to a lack of diversity and ecological collapse of the malaria parasite in regions undergoing elimination.
This project was published as Morgan & Brazeau et al. 2020 in the Malaria Journal1.
Morgan AP, Brazeau NF, Ngasala B, Mhamilawa LE, Denton M, Msellem M, Morris U, Filer DL, Aydemir O, Bailey JA, Parr JB, Mårtensson A, Bjorkman A, Juliano JJ. Falciparum malaria from coastal Tanzania and Zanzibar remains highly connected despite effective control efforts on the archipelago. Malar J. 2020 Jan 28;19(1):47. doi: 10.1186/s12936-020-3137-8. PMID: 31992305; PMCID: PMC6988337. ↩︎
