Using Mobile Phone Data to Reduce Spread of Disease
While human mobility has important benefits for economic growth, it can generate negative externalities. This paper studies the effect of mobility on the spread of disease in a low-incidence setting when people do not internalize their risks to oth...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/143411585572411591/Using-Mobile-Phone-Data-to-Reduce-Spread-of-Disease http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33520 |
| Summary: | While human mobility has important
benefits for economic growth, it can generate negative
externalities. This paper studies the effect of mobility on
the spread of disease in a low-incidence setting when people
do not internalize their risks to others. Using malaria as a
case study and 15 billion mobile phone records across nine
million SIM cards, this paper causally quantifies the
relationship between travel and the spread of disease. The
estimates indicate that an infected traveler contributes to
1.7 additional cases reported in the health facility at the
traveler's destination. This paper develops a
simulation-based policy tool that uses mobile phone data to
inform strategic targeting of travelers based on their
origins and destinations. The simulations suggest that
targeting informed by mobile phone data could reduce the
caseload by 50 percent more than current strategies that
rely only on previous incidence. |
|---|