Passport Health logo
VACCINATIONS|FIND A TRAVEL CLINIC|ADVICE
  • Home
    • About
        • Company History
        • Careers
        • Executive Team
        • Contact Us
        • Customer Feedback
        • FAQ
        • Mission Statement
        • Privacy Policy
        • Blog
    • Close
  • Destination Advice
    • Top Destinations
        • Brazil
        • China
        • Costa Rica
        • India
        • Kenya
        • Peru
        • Philippines
        • South Africa
        • Thailand
        • Vietnam
    • Destination Advice
          • Afghanistan
          • Albania
          • Algeria
          • American Samoa
          • Andorra
          • Angola
          • Anguilla
          • Antarctica
          • Antigua and Barbuda
          • Argentina
          • Armenia
          • Aruba
          • Australia
          • Austria
          • Azerbaijan
          • Azores
          • Bahamas
          • Bahrain
          • Balearics
          • Bangladesh
          • Barbados
          • Belarus
          • Belgium
          • Belize
          • Benin
          • Bermuda
          • Bhutan
          • Bolivia
          • Bonaire
          • Bora Bora
          • Bosnia
          • Botswana
          • Brazil
          • British Virgin Islands
          • Brunei
          • Bulgaria
          • Burkina Faso
          • Burma
          • Burundi
          • Cambodia
          • Cameroon
          • Canada
          • Canary Islands
          • Cape Verde
          • Cayman Islands
          • Central African Republic
          • Chad
          • Chile
          • China
          • Christmas Island
          • Cocos (Keeling) Islands
          • Colombia
          • Comoros
          • Cook Islands
          • Costa Rica
          • Cote d'Ivoire
          • Croatia
          • Cuba
          • Curacao
          • Cyprus
          • Czechia
          • Democratic Republic of the Congo
          • Denmark
          • Djibouti
          • Dominica
          • Dominican Republic
          • East Timor
          • Easter Island
          • Ecuador
          • Egypt
          • El Salvador
          • Equatorial Guinea
          • Eritrea
          • Estonia
          • Ethiopia
          • Falkland Islands
          • Faroe Islands
          • Fiji
          • Finland
          • France
          • French Guiana
          • French Polynesia
          • Gabon
          • Gambia
          • Georgia
          • Germany
          • Ghana
          • Gibraltar
          • Greece
          • Greenland
          • Grenada
          • Guadeloupe
          • Guam
          • Guatemala
          • Guinea-Bissau
          • Guinea
          • Guyana
          • Haiti
          • Hawaii
          • Honduras
          • Hong Kong
          • Hungary
          • Ibiza
          • Iceland
          • India
          • Indonesia
          • Iran
          • Iraq
          • Ireland
          • Israel
          • Italy
          • Jamaica
          • Japan
          • Jordan
          • Kazakhstan
          • Kenya
          • Kiribati
          • Kosovo
          • Kuwait
          • Kyrgyzstan
          • Laos
          • Latvia
          • Lebanon
          • Lesotho
          • Liberia
          • Libya
          • Liechtenstein
          • Lithuania
          • Luxembourg
          • Macau
          • Macedonia
          • Madagascar
          • Madeira Islands
          • Malawi
          • Malaysia
          • Maldives
          • Mali
          • Malta
          • Marshall Islands
          • Martinique
          • Mauritania
          • Mauritius
          • Mayotte
          • Mexico
          • Micronesia
          • Moldova
          • Monaco
          • Mongolia
          • Montenegro
          • Montserrat
          • Morocco
          • Mozambique
          • Namibia
          • Nauru
          • Nepal
          • Netherlands
          • New Caledonia
          • New Zealand
          • Nicaragua
          • Niger
          • Nigeria
          • Niue
          • Norfolk Island
          • North Korea
          • Northern Mariana Islands
          • Norway
          • Oman
          • Pakistan
          • Palau
          • Palestinian Territories
          • Panama
          • Papua New Guinea
          • Paraguay
          • Peru
          • Philippines
          • Pitcairn Islands
          • Poland
          • Portugal
          • Puerto Rico
          • Qatar
          • Republic of the Congo
          • Réunion
          • Romania
          • Russia
          • Rwanda
          • Saba
          • St. Barthelemy
          • Saint Helena
          • St. Kitts and Nevis
          • St. Lucia
          • Saint Martin
          • St. Pierre-et-Miquelon
          • St. Vincent and the Grenadines
          • Samoa
          • San Marino
          • Sao Tome and Principe
          • Saudi Arabia
          • Senegal
          • Serbia
          • Seychelles
          • Sierra Leone
          • Singapore
          • Sint Eustatius
          • Slovakia
          • Slovenia
          • Solomon Islands
          • Somalia
          • South Africa
          • South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
          • South Korea
          • South Sudan
          • Spain
          • Sri Lanka
          • Sudan
          • Suriname
          • Swaziland
          • Sweden
          • Switzerland
          • Syria
          • Tahiti
          • Taiwan
          • Tajikistan
          • Tanzania
          • Thailand
          • Togo
          • Tokelau
          • Tonga
          • Trinidad and Tobago
          • Tunisia
          • Turkey
          • Turkmenistan
          • Turks and Caicos Islands
          • Tuvalu
          • U.S. Virgin Islands
          • Uganda
          • Ukraine
          • United Arab Emirates
          • United Kingdom
          • United States
          • Uruguay
          • Uzbekistan
          • Vanuatu
          • Vatican
          • Venezuela
          • Vietnam
          • Wake Island
          • Western Sahara
          • Yemen
          • Zambia
          • Zimbabwe
    • Close
  • Travel Medicine
    • Travel Medical Services
        • Vaccines for Travel
        • Travel Health Consulting
        • Travellers’ Diarrhea Kits
        • Dengue Fever Prevention
        • Malaria Medication
        • Chikungunya Prevention
        • Zika Virus Prevention
        • Ebola Virus
        • Coronavirus
    • Close
  • Vaccinations
    • Key Travel Vaccines
      • Typhoid
      • Yellow Fever
      • Hepatitis A
      • Rabies
      • Japanese Encephalitis
      • Drug Identification Numbers (DIN)
    • Other Travel Vaccines
      • Cholera (Dukoral)
      • Hep A/Typhoid Combo (Vivaxim)
      • Hepatitis B
      • Malaria Information
      • Meningitis
      • Polio
    • Routine Vaccinations
      • Tetanus-Diphtheria-Pertussis
      • Measles – Mumps – Rubella (MMR)
      • Pneumonia
      • Shingles
      • Influenza (The Flu)
    • Close
  • Other Services
    • Additional Services
      • TB Tests
      • Physician Referral Program
    • Close
  • For Employers
    • Corporate Wellness Solutions
      • Travel Medicine & Vaccinations
      • Onsite Flu Clinics
      • Onsite Vaccination Clinics
      • Biometric Screenings
      • Vaccine Credentialing
    • Close
  • Locations
        • Ontario
          Barrie Travel Clinic
          Brampton Travel Clinic
          Carlington - Ottawa Travel Clinic
          Downtown - Ottawa Travel Clinic
          Etobicoke Travel Clinic
          Hamilton Travel Clinic
          Kingston Travel Clinic
          Kitchener Travel Clinic
          London Travel Clinic
          Markham Travel Clinic
          Mississauga Travel Clinic
          North York Travel Clinic
          Oakville Travel Clinic
          Richmond Hill Travel Clinic
          St. Catharines Travel Clinic
          Toronto Travel Clinic
          Whitby Travel Clinic
          Yorkville Travel Clinic
        • Alberta
          Chinook - Calgary Travel Clinic
          Downtown Calgary Travel Clinic
          Downtown Edmonton Travel Clinic
          Southeast Edmonton Travel Clinic
          St. Albert Travel Clinic
        • British Columbia
          Burnaby Travel Clinic
          Downtown Vancouver Travel Clinic
          North Vancouver Travel Clinic
          Richmond Travel Clinic
          Surrey Travel Clinic
        • Quebec
          Clinique Santé-Voyage Centre-Ville Montréal
          Clinique Santé-Voyage Laval
          Clinique Santé-Voyage Ville de Québec
          Clinique Santé-Voyage Westmount
    • Close

Facebook Introduces Maps to Help Fight Disease

June 11, 2019 by Caitlin Hartwyk

Facebook has developed new maps that can help with outbreak data.

The world has been busy with virus and disease outbreaks over the last few years. It’s more than an increase in measles. Hepatitis A has also surged recently, along with yellow fever and various other new illnesses in the country.

Health officials have had a tough task handling these new disease risk. They’ve looked for completely new outlets to improve relief efforts and help those affected by the outbreaks.

Two of the most notable outbreaks in recent years were cholera in Zimbabwe and Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The cholera outbreak led to the country’s Ministry of Health declaring a state of emergency. Ebola cases in the DRC seem to grow with every new day. The virus has spiraled so out of control that it became the world’s second largest Ebola outbreak in history.

One need these outbreaks have exposed is for more data.

It’s important that countries have current data on their population so that they can contain the outbreak, treat those infected or at risk, and help the country recover. But, not every country can access the up-to-date population data.

A new development from Facebook could change that problem. The company recently came out with three maps that could greatly assist public relief efforts in times of need such as disease outbreaks.

How Can Facebook’s Maps Help?

Facebook’s Data for Good is set up to provide useful data to address humanitarian issues.

They first started out creating similar maps for first responders and aid groups. Those maps helped tackle natural disasters, but now they’re looking toward health emergencies.

Facebook partnered with more than a dozen nonprofits and universities, including UNICEF and the Harvard School of Public Health and Direct Relief. That partnership led to a trio of disease prevention maps to aid public health organizations.

These maps take information from Facebook’s own proprietary treasure trove of data on its 2.38 billion users as well as commercial available datasets. The three population density maps illustrate where people live, how they move about the country, and if they have internet access. Facebook hopes these maps will help health organizations better understand global population. They’ll have a better idea of population density and where it’s spread out over the country, how they move about, and if they have connectivity.

But, these factors mean nothing without better disease response.

That’s where health organizations can benefit with the new maps. They can respond to outbreaks and where supplies should be delivered to be most effective. With the recent outbreaks in the past few years, health organizations have often been relying old census data. And if the country is more remote and the population is spread out, there could be very little information available at all.

The company has also found use in artificial intelligence for these maps. With that technology, census information and satellite images, Facebook developed a much improved population map. The company even stated the map was, “three times more detailed than any source.”

Population Density Maps

The population density map can provide an estimate on the number of people living within 30-meter grid tiles. They can also go further in detail, showing the demographics of those living in the areas.

More specifically, they will provide insights on age groups more easily affected by disease outbreaks. Data like that can help higher-risk groups like, “the number of children under five, the number of women of reproductive age, as well as young and elderly populations.”

Movement Maps

The movement maps do just what they sound like: track Facebook users’ movements with their mobile phones. The technology is like how Facebook allows its users to be marked safe during natural disasters and other emergencies.

When combined with the other maps, Facebook expects movement maps to offer a predictive aid. Health officials will better predict where other epidemics could occur next.

For example, it could help predict the travel of the flu, typically spread from one person to another by contact.

Network Coverage Maps

Lastly, the network coverage maps can provide an outline to where people can be reached with online messaging.

Communication and aid should be improved with modern technology, but it’s also been a problem for some outbreaks. Regions like Haiti have struggled getting needed aid with little access to aid. These maps could help make that problem much less of an issue. Health organizations could send alerts to the population in the infected areas about the situation and relief efforts.

In fact, the Red Cross already found use in these maps. The organization could decide how to spread out workers who are educating people about getting vaccinated for measles.

What Long-Term Help Will These New Maps Provide?

Having information on your population’s density, their movement, and if they have network connection helps health organizations understand the population’s activity. This can assist in “learning how epidemics and outbreaks might appear and evolve, and how best to tackle them.”

By combining the maps with other available public health data, Facebook believes health organizations and governments will be better equipped to address these outbreaks, leading to better outcomes.

Laura McGorman is Facebook’s policy lead on Data for Good. She said that the, “data on human movement can be a total black box for health organizations … it’s a huge gap we can fill.” The data allows the groups on the ground, who already have mechanisms in place for monitoring outbreaks, to have insight into, “how human mobility patterns influence the spread of that disease.”

At the moment these three maps created by Facebook are only available for a select group of Facebook’s Data for Good partners. Some of these include Harvard School of Public Health, International Medical Corps, UNICEF, the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London, and the World Economic Forum.

With this data in hand they are optimistic in improving monitoring outbreaks and relief efforts. More importantly, they also hope to better contain the spread of diseases.

Did you know Facebook was trying to help in relief efforts? Do you think Facebook’s new maps will help prevent and stop future outbreaks? Lets us know in the comments, or via Facebook and Twitter.

Written for Passport Health by Brianna Malotke. Brianna is a freelance writer and costume designer located in Illinois. She’s an avid coffee drinker and enjoys researching new topics for writing.

Filed Under: General Posts

About Us

Passport Health's blog provides travelers and travel enthusiasts with a variety of news and features. We focus on bringing the most interesting and relevant stories right to our readers. Topics range from the vaccines needed for a destination to updates on recent outbreaks, travel advice and much more. Feel free to check out some of our most popular posts, linked in the sidebar, or our most recent posts below

Recent Blog Posts

  • How Did the New Omicron Variant Develop? Why Did it Develop So Quickly?
  • When to Get the Twinrix Vaccine Before Traveling Abroad
  • Will There Ever Be a Cure For HPV?
  • The History of AIDS

Blog Archives

  • About Us
  • Clinical Trials
  • Contact Us
  • PIPEDA Policy and Consent Form
  • Privacy Policy
  • Automatic Data Collection Statement
  • Sitemap
Schedule Your Appointment
Questions? Please call or E-mail Us
Connect With Us:
Passport Health Canada on Facebook
Passport Health on Twitter
Passport Health on YouTube
Passport Health on Instagram
Passport Health on Linked In
Passport Health Feed

Passport Health is an Outlier business Passport Health es una empresa que pertenece al grupo Outlier Passport Health est une entreprise du groupe Outlier Copyright © 2023