Jerusalem start-up wins award for fight to eliminate malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa
A Jerusalem-based company believes it can help the world battle malaria more effectively, and this week, Zzapp Malaria came in first place in the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE competition for its AI-based mobile app and dashboard that proposes an optimal strategy for individual towns and villages struggling with the disease.
Zzapp beat out more than 10,000 applicants for the award, which was launched in 2016 to promote the use of AI to solve the world’s most pressing problems. Zzapp was awarded a $3 million prize to support further development, and also won a People’s Choice Award as the “Most Inspiring Team.”
Each year, malaria kills more than 400,000 people, many of whom are children under five, and it greatly impedes developing economies. The disease has been eliminated from many countries through large-scale action to target bodies of water in which malaria-carrying mosquitoes breed. However, similar operations have failed in several African countries due to planning and operational complexities stemming from dispersed geography and tropical climate.
Zzapp uses AI to tailor optimal strategies for each village or neighborhood that is threatened by the illness, and it then breaks down these strategies into clear and manageable tasks.
“The idea behind Zzapp is that AI can serve not only to diagnose malaria, but to actually eliminate it,” CEO Arnon Houri-Yafin told The Jerusalem Post. “The way Zzapp strives to do so is by targeting the root of the problem: the breeding sites of malaria-bearing mosquitoes.”
Zzapp is a subsidiary of Tel Aviv’s Sight Diagnostics, whose Parasight AI-based system is used to rapidly diagnose malaria in blood tests in 24 countries. Houri-Yafin had the idea to use AI to search for malaria hot spots while spending time in hospitals in India conducting clinical trials of the device.
“Zzapp’s technology uses AI to analyze satellite imagery, and various data on topography, climate and local mosquito species,” he explained. “It recommends the optimal strategy for every village in terms of the areas that must be scanned for water bodies, houses that should be sprayed, and when and in what order operations should be conducted.”
Zzapp says it helps increase the cost-effectiveness of such operations, enabling their execution even with limited budgets, and under the most challenging environmental conditions. The app was designed specifically to address local needs: it has low battery consumption, does not require continuous Internet connectivity and works well even on less advanced smartphones.
The app has been tested in six countries across Africa and has been proven to increase coverage of bodies of water, shorten work time and significantly increase the effectiveness of the operation, the company said.
A recent project in Obuasi, Ghana, reduced the mosquito population by over 60% in as little as three and a half months for a city of 200,000 . Using the app, the cost of the operation was just 20 cents per person protected, compared to $5 for a simple house spraying plan, the company said.
The company is also working on an ambitious project to completely eliminate malaria from São Tomé and Príncipe, a small island nation off the coast of West Africa, within just two years, it added.
The IBM Watson prize money will be dedicated to one ambitious goal: demonstrating that rapid malaria elimination is possible in Sub-Saharan Africa, Houri-Yafin said.