Trachoma is the leading infectious cause of blindness, targeted for elimination as a public health problem by 2020.

Since 2012, the Global Trachoma Mapping Project (GTMP) - the largest infectious disease survey ever undertaken - and its successor, Tropical Data (www.tropicaldata.org), have supported ministries of health in 40 countries to conduct standardised, epidemiologically robust population-based prevalence surveys in 1816 evaluation units (EUs – generally equivalent to a health district), processing >168 million data items (trachoma clinical signs, GPS coordinates, and environmental indicators). The datasets include longitudinal data (baseline, impact, and surveillance surveys conducted with the same methodology in the same EUs).

This project will link those data with other geographical and environmental datasets. Via modelling and geospatial analyses, the project will: improve our understanding of the epidemiology of trachoma at various scales; refine epidemiologically and statistically sound survey methods for determining whether trachoma elimination targets have been met, and for post-elimination surveillance; determine predictors of reaching the elimination targets; forecast timelines for achieving these targets; assess the cost-effectiveness of these methods.

These outcomes will help inform global public health policy for trachoma elimination, and will be relevant to other infectious diseases.