Tanzania using drones to monitor malaria during the climate crisis

追加: 2026-05-16

[00:00:09]I'm here at Dar es Salaam University in Tanzania where scientists are now using drones and machine learning to monitor mosquito breeding sites across the city.

[00:00:18]This pioneering program is massively aiding public health efforts to tackle the disease of malaria and it's proving particularly important as new breeds of mosquito and climate change are changing how the disease spreads.

[00:00:39]What we're doing is we are supporting entomologists. We're supporting research scientist with drone data that they're using essentially to survey blocks in 20 to 50 different wards in this city of more than 6 and 1/2 million people to detect mosquito breeding sites. So potential breeding sites can be tires that are placed on roofs.

[00:01:11]It could be open water cans. Essentially any kind of water catchment area that is a potential mosquito breeding site, we are trying to detect that using drones.

[00:01:24]And afterwards we're going to use that data and see if there's a correlation between that and mosquito prevalence in those areas.