Abstract

Malaria is the deadliest parasitic and mosquito-borne infection on the planet. It’s a big public health problem in many tropical and subtropical countries. In Bangladesh, over 17 million people are at risk of malaria. Data on its distribution in the country, however, are limited. We wanted to track malaria hotspots through both space and time. To find these hotspots we used data on malaria cases, collected from non-governmental organizations in Bangladesh. We generated maps of these regions for four years and analyzed their stability through time. We mapped several stable hotspots, most of them located in the southeast, and found out that only a small proportion of the population accounted for most malaria cases. Moreover, stable hotspots from one year can be used to predict future hotspots. This may help locate the best areas to target for elimination efforts.