Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health have used mobile phone records to reveal important facts about how malaria is spread. According to Science magazine, the academics studied the timing and origin of mobile calls and texts to track the movement of users in Kenya and then mapped the resulting data against the spread of malaria in the country.

The results suggest that malaria is spread mainly by humans travelling from Lake Victoria in the west of the country to the capital of Nairobi, which is in its centre. And humans have a greater role in the disease’s movement than mosquitoes.

The Harvard researchers analysed mobile phone records between June 2008 and June 2009. The study was authored by Caroline Buckee, an assistant professor of epidemiology in the Harvard School of Public Health.