Molecular Malaria Epidemiology: Mapping and Burden Estimates for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2007

Epidemiologic data on malaria are scant in many high-burden countries including the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which suffers the second-highest global burden of malaria. Malaria control efforts in regions with challenging infrastructure require reproducible and efficient surveillance. We employed new high-throughput molecular testing to characterize the state of malaria control in the DRC and estimate childhood mortality attributable to excess malaria transmission. prevalence; based on the population attributable fraction, 26,488 yearly under-5 deaths were attributable to excess malaria transmission. prevalence is substantial in the DRC and is associated with under-5 mortality. Molecular testing offers a new, generalizable, and efficient approach to characterizing malaria endemicity in underserved countries