( CNN ) -- If you 're going to pursue an elusive killer , you sometimes have to get creative . A pioneering study into malaria transmission in Kenya , using data gleaned from the cell phones of nearly 15 million people , has given scientists new clues into how the deadly disease spreads . By tracking the population 's movement over a year using cell phone data and comparing it with detailed information on malaria infection rates across the country , the study reveals how human travel contributes to the disease 's spread . The study , led by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health and seven other institutions , could inform how governments -- particularly in sub-Saharan Africa -- act in future to control the disease 's spread . Malaria deaths are concentrated in that part of the continent . Published in the journal Science on Thursday , the study , `` Quantifying the impact of human mobility on malaria , '' gives key insights into a disease that kills a child a minute in Africa , according to the World Health Organization . `` This is the first time that such a massive amount of cell phone data -- from millions of individuals over the course of a year -- has been used , together with detailed infectious disease data , to measure human mobility and understand how a disease is spreading , '' said senior author Caroline Buckee , an assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard . Since the disease is passed on to humans by mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite , the movement of infected people into areas of lower incidence is an important factor . Between June 2008 and June 2009 , lead author Amy Wesolowski , a Carnegie-Mellon doctoral student , and her team mapped every call or text made by 14,816,521 Kenyan mobile phone subscribers to one of 11,920 cell towers in 692 different settlements . This allowed them to follow the destination and duration of each trip made from the cell phone user 's primary place of residence . Using detailed data from a malaria prevalence map for 2009 , drawn up by the Kenya Medical Research Institute and the Malaria Atlas Project , the researchers determined that malaria largely emanates from western Kenya 's Lake Victoria region and spreads east , chiefly toward the capital , Nairobi . The team `` found that a surprisingly large fraction of 'imported ' infections â€ ” that is , infections that are carried by people moving from one place to another â€ ” wind up in Nairobi , with infected residents returning there after journeys to spots such as Lake Victoria or the coast , '' the news release says . This may lead to an increased risk of local transmission within Nairobi and its surrounding areas , despite the lower number of mosquitoes , or `` malaria vectors , '' in urban areas . The research suggests that efforts to control malaria could benefit from a focus on `` source '' areas where incidence is high , rather than on areas where fewer people are infected . Human travel patterns mean the parasite is likely repeatedly to be carried back to areas where it has been almost eliminated . The study advises that on a very local scale , `` hot spots of transmission can be targeted by indoor residual spraying , vector habitat removal , insecticides , drug administration , and bed-net use . '' But attempts to control transmission by targeting human travel between regions `` will be completely different from those that concentrate on local transmission hot spots , focusing on communicating risks to travelers to alter their behaviors , restricting travel patterns , and/or conducting routine surveillance in high-risk areas . '' This could mean encouraging people from areas of high prevalence to use insecticide-treated bed nets when traveling to areas of lower malaria incidence to avoid bringing the parasite with them . It also advises visitors to areas such as Lake Victoria to take greater care not to become infected before their return home . Wesolowski acknowledges certain limitations such as following only cell phone users in areas where there are cell towers and inability to track people 's cross-border movements . However , the importance of such research into one of the world 's largest preventable causes of death should not be underestimated . There were about 216 million cases of malaria worldwide in 2010 and about 655,000 deaths from the disease that year , according to the World Health Organization . Understanding and preventing the disease 's spread from areas of high incidence is a key weapon in the fight against malaria . The innovative research could also point the way for other studies into infectious diseases , helped by ever growing rates of cell phone usage worldwide , and particularly in the developing world . `` As mobile phone data sets become increasingly available and representative of entire populations , we anticipate that studies like the one we present here will become common for understanding a range of different infectious diseases , as well as for gaining greater insight into human behavior on a population level , '' the study 's authors say . The WHO 's 2011 world malaria report shows that concerted efforts to tackle the disease can make a difference , with death rates down by more than 25 % globally since 2000 . CNN 's Faith Karimi contributed to this report .
Researchers use cell phone data to track movement of about 15 million people . Score: 6 Many Nairobi residents carry the malaria parasite back with them after traveling elsewhere . A child dies every minute in Africa because of malaria .