Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the response by Lord Bates on 3 April (HL Deb, cols 930–1) concerning neglected tropical diseases, what study the Department for International Development has made of the use of technologies to map neglected tropical diseases using remote sensing technologies and mobile smartphone technologies.

DFID funded the Global Trachoma Mapping Project, the largest infectious disease survey ever undertaken using mobile smartphones. DFID is also supporting disease mapping using mobile phones through the Tropical Data initiative. The first phase of this initiative is focussing on impact and surgery surveys for trachoma with mapping of other diseases added at a later date.