PLoS Medicine
(Accessed 5 February 2012)
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/browse.action?field=date

Hitting Hotspots: Spatial Targeting of Malaria for Control and Elimination
Teun Bousema, Jamie T. Griffin, Robert W. Sauerwein, David L. Smith, Thomas S. Churcher, Willem Takken, Azra Ghani, Chris Drakeley, Roly Gosling Policy Forum, published 31 Jan 2012
doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001165

Summary Points
– Heterogeneity is a common facet of infectious diseases, whereby infection and disease are concentrated in a small proportion of individuals.

– In malaria, heterogeneity is manifested as small groups of households, or hotspots, that are at a substantially increased risk of malaria transmission.

– These hotspots exist in all transmission settings but are less easily detected at high transmission intensity.

– Hotspots maintain transmission in low transmission seasons and fuel transmission in the high transmission seasons.

– Targeting hotspots is a highly efficient way to reduce malaria transmission at all levels of transmission intensity.