It infects more than 200 million people every year worldwide and is also responsible for killing about 500,000 people a year.

It is transmitted by mosquitoes, and manifests itself through symptoms such as fever and headaches, which in the most serious cases may even progress to a coma or even result in death. It is widespread in tropical and subtropical regions along a large strip around the equator, encompassing much of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and also America.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has already carried out many campaigns carried out and communicated on a large scale throughout sub-Saharan Africa, with the aim of informing and combating this disease, thus interrupting its transmission cycle.

There are millions of mosquito nets mounted to help keep mosquitoes away, they have been distributed by communities for free as well as insecticides to vaporize the interior of houses. Already in some areas of Zanzibar, these prevention measures achieved a decrease in the prevalence of the disease from 40% to 1%.

At the moment the Aberystwyth University in Wales, in partnership with the Zanzibar Malaria Elimination Program, is completing all these existing methods of prevention using Drones, which compute images of large areas of standing water, mosquitoes to reproduce. The goal is to create exceptionally accurate maps of potential locations where they inhabit, so that they can be treated with larvicides.

In about 20 minutes it was possible for a single Drone, a survey corresponding to an area of 30 hectares, and that image could still be processed and analyzed that same afternoon.

In addition, researchers are planning to incorporate Drones images into smartphones to help larvicide spraying teams and thus better track progress.

Populations have been involved in this process to minimize the negative effects of using Drones, once related to the invasion of privacy.