Participatory Mapping for Malaria Control in Dar es Salaam

This study was conducted in urban Dar es Salaam, the largest city and de facto capital of Tanzania with almost 2.7 million inhabitants in 2005 [28 ]. Situated on the shores of the Indian Ocean, with large parts of the city located only a few meters above sea level, Dar es Salaam has a hot and humid tropical climate with two rainy seasons and is characterized as an area with endemic and perennial malaria, with transmission occurring during the entire year [29 ]. The administrative city region covers an area of almost 1,400 km² [14 (link)], of which 56 km² are covered by the fifteen wards included in the UMCP at present (figure 1). Although the UMCP area only makes up for 4% of the overall city region, it covers some of the most densely populated parts of the city. It is inhabited by more than 610,000 people, and therefore almost a quarter of the total population [30 ]. Most of this area is built-up, but nevertheless provides excellent breeding sites for mosquitoes [14 (link),25 (link)], especially where the groundwater table is high. In Dar es Salaam, almost all kinds of water accumulations can be breeding sites for Anopheles sp. larvae [25 (link)]. The participatory mapping procedure described here was developed in three of the fifteen UMCP wards. These three wards had been selected as study area because the UMCP had chosen them as the first wards to implement community-based larval control starting from 2006.