Fig. 1

Map of Mauritania showing the locations of the sampling sites in relation to average annual rainfall and previously known areas of malaria endemicity. a Malaria patients were sampled from 12 locations in Mauritania. In the capital city Nouakchott (Location 1) sampling was conducted from three hospitals: Health Centre of Teyarett, Cheikh Zayed Hospital Center, and the National Hospital Centre. Sampling was conducted from single facilities in each of the other 11 locations: hospitals in Sélibaby, Aioun, Néma and Zouérat, and health centres in each of the other locations. Malaria parasite species were determined from 472 patients in total (numbers from each location are given in Table 1). The approximate mean annual rainfall in millilitres in different areas is indicated by isohyets shown as dashed lines. b. Inset rectangles indicate the position of the study area map on previously published maps of malaria parasite distribution in Africa [1, 3]. Estimated endemic distributions of P. falciparum and P. vivax in 2010 are indicated by coloured shading (blue indicating low prevalence, yellow and red indicating higher prevalences). Grey shading indicates where sporadic transmission is considered possible without endemic maintenance. In the lower map the diagonal shading indicates where the majority of the population has the Duffy-negative blood group phenotype