Drones and smartphones help fight malaria in Tanzania

The fight against malaria has been improving, but there's still lots more work to do. For one thing, anti-larval sprays are both expensive and time-consuming -- you can't always afford to spray an entire area. Thankfully, a mix of technology is making that mosquito battle more practical. Wales' Aberystwyth University and Tanzania's Zanzibar Malaria Elimination Programme have partnered on an initiative that uses drones to survey malaria hot zones and identify the water-laden areas where malaria-carrying mosquitoes are likely to breed. An off-the-shelf drone (in this case, DJI's Phantom 3) can cover a large rice paddy in 20 minutes, and the data can be processed in the space of an afternoon.