It’s estimated that about every 30 seconds, a child in Africa dies of malaria. That’s according to Andrew Tatem, of University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute. Dr. Tatem said that even though malaria is a completely curable disease, there are ten new cases every second. He’s studying how people crossing national borders bring malaria infections with them.

Andrew Tatem: The problem is, once countries get down to incredibly low levels of malaria transmission, movement of people can bring infections into a country and cause problems in terms of stopping and controlling malaria in a neighboring country.

Patricia Mechael on mHealth, or mobile health, in Africa

Tatem said that as people cross borders, to flee famine or war, or look for work, they take the disease with them. He talked about parts of Africa, where most borders are nothing more than a line on a map and there’s little border control.

Andrew Tatem: There are actually billions of people who are at risk of malaria. The transmission zone, where malaria is continually transmitted from mosquitoes to humans and back to mosquitoes, occurs all across the tropical areas of the world.

Tatem said that simple tools like insecticide-treated net beds and effective drugs can help to combat malaria. But, he said eliminating the disease also requires cooperation with neighboring countries.

Andrew Tatem: If countries are going actually control malaria and remove it as a public health burden, they’re really going to have to work together with their neighbors. It’s not going to be very effective if one country has implemented an expensive control program that is effectively working to reduce malaria levels down to incredibly low levels, if their neighbors are still maintaining high transmission because population movements will continue to bring infections in.