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World Health Organization indicates every minute two children under the age of five
die in Africa, affected by malaria. Kids can play in the morning, play soccer, and in the
afternoon be severely ill from the malaria. Sometimes people ask me, “How do you see
mosquitoes from satellites?” I don’t see mosquitoes from satellites, unfortunately,
but I see the environment where mosquitoes are working. I see that mosquitoes like warm
and moist environments, and this is what I see from operational satellites. I see how
green is the vegetation; if vegetation is green, it means there is enough moisture.
If vegetation is green that means that the temperature is very comfortable. If the temperature
is too hot, it’s not good for mosquitoes; if it’s too dry it’s not good for mosquitoes.
Every week we receive satellite data, and we convert them, we massage satellite data,
and we convert them to our indices which indicate if the surface is warm, if the surface is
green enough and has enough moisture. We can identify malaria approximately from one to
two months ahead of time; we can identify conditions for development of malaria. We
can identify malaria intensity. We can identify areas affected by malaria, duration of malaria
from our data. We focus first on malaria and first on Africa because Africa contributes
a lot of cases of malaria. A lot of people are affected by malaria; half of the world
population is affected by malaria.