Heather Zornetzer

Using mobile phone data to track people’s movements can help predict how dengue fever spreads, epidemiologists have shown in Pakistan. The disease only appeared in northeast Pakistan in recent years, after being “largely confined” to the southern city of Karachi, the study says. As the transmission of the virus that causes dengue fever is partly driven by human travel, analysing how people move across the country allows researchers to predict when and where epidemics may break out.