Malaria
Malaria is a deadly disease that has been eradicated in several countries, but many African countries are still losing their lives to it.
Core trick
A WhatsApp bot answers district-level questions in four languages by combining local weather forecasts with intervention timing rules.
Description
Malaria is a deadly disease that has been eradicated in several countries, but many African countries are still losing their lives to it. Field workers are the warriors who are instrumental in eradicating malaria with intervention mechanisms, but using the right intervention at a wrong time is extremely ineffective. They need real-time, real-world conditions on when to use these interventions. That's what MalarIA is achieving. It is built with field workers in mind, who may not have laptops in the field, so it's a Whatsapp application, enabled to speak four local languages (English, French, Portuguese and Chichewa). It provides them with conditions for intervention, and checklists so they can be prepared.
README excerpt
# 🦟 MalarIA ### A field-worker decision agent for malaria prevention **Malaria is beatable. Timing is everything.** It's curable, preventable, and already gone from dozens of countries. In **Mozambique** and **Malawi** it still kills every day — and on the ground the difference is doing the **right thing at the right moment**, before the mosquitoes win. MalarIA is a WhatsApp agent that puts that judgement in a field worker's pocket: ask about your district in your own language, and get the situation *now*, the right intervention, and whether the weather will hold — in seconds. 🌍 **Website:** [dimension-privileges-loving-wallet.trycloudflare.com](https://dimension-privileges-loving-wallet.trycloudflare.com/) > **The right tool at the wrong time saves no one.** > Spray before the rains and it washes off. Hand out nets after the peak and the cases already happened. Timing is not a detail — it *is* the intervention. --- ## The reality Malaria is curable and preventable — yet it remains one of the deadliest diseases on Earth, and sub-Saharan Africa carries almost the entire burden. | | | |---|---| | **263M** | malaria cases worldwide in 2023 (WHO) | | **~597K** | deaths in 2023 — mostly children under 5 | | **~95%** | of all cases & deaths are in the WHO African Region | | **10.2M** | estimated cases/yr in **Mozambique** — 295 per 1,000 at risk (WHO GHO, 2024) | | **6.4M** | estimated cases/yr in **Malawi** — 295 per 1,000 at risk (WHO GHO, 2024) | | **4 in 5** | malaria