Using Mobile Phone Data to Reduce Spread of Disease
No hay miniatura disponible
Fecha
Autores
Título de la revista
ISSN de la revista
Título del volumen
Editor
World Bank, Washington, DC
Resumen
Descripción
While human mobility has important
benefits for economic growth, it can generate negative
externalities. This paper studies the effect of mobility on
the spread of disease in a low-incidence setting when people
do not internalize their risks to others. Using malaria as a
case study and 15 billion mobile phone records across nine
million SIM cards, this paper causally quantifies the
relationship between travel and the spread of disease. The
estimates indicate that an infected traveler contributes to
1.7 additional cases reported in the health facility at the
traveler's destination. This paper develops a
simulation-based policy tool that uses mobile phone data to
inform strategic targeting of travelers based on their
origins and destinations. The simulations suggest that
targeting informed by mobile phone data could reduce the
caseload by 50 percent more than current strategies that
rely only on previous incidence.
Palabras clave
HEALTH, PUBLIC HEALTH, DISEASE CONTROL, EPIDEMICS, MOBILE PHONE, MOBILITY, PUBLIC POLICY, BIG DATA, MALARIA, TRAVEL