Malaria patterns across altitudinal zones of Mount Elgon following intensified control and prevention programs in Uganda
Date
2020-06-17
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
BMC (part of Springer Nature)
Abstract
Background: Malaria remains a major tropical vector-borne disease of immense public health concern owing to its debilitating effects in sub-Saharan Africa. Over the past 30 years, the high altitude areas in Eastern Africa have been
reported to experience increased cases of malaria. Governments including that of the Republic of Uganda have
responded through intensifying programs that can potentially minimize malaria transmission while reducing
associated fatalities. However, malaria patterns following these intensified control and prevention interventions in
the changing climate remains widely unexplored in East African highland regions. This study thus analyzed malaria
patterns across altitudinal zones of Mount Elgon, Uganda.
Methods: Times-series data on malaria cases (2011–2017) from five level III local health centers occurring across
three altitudinal zones; low, mid and high altitude was utilized. Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) interpolation
regression and Mann Kendall trend test were used to analyze malaria patterns. Vegetation attributes from the three
altitudinal zones were analyzed using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was used to determine the
Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model was used to project malaria patterns for a 7 year period.
Results: Malaria across the three zones declined over the study period. The hotspots for malaria were highly
variable over time in all the three zones. Rainfall played a significant role in influencing malaria burdens across the
three zones. Vegetation had a significant influence on malaria in the higher altitudes. Meanwhile, in the lower
altitude, human population had a significant positive correlation with malaria cases.
Conclusions: Despite observed decline in malaria cases across the three altitudinal zones, the high altitude zone
became a malaria hotspot as cases variably occurred in the zone. Rainfall played the biggest role in malaria trends.
Human population appeared to influence malaria incidences in the low altitude areas partly due to population
concentration in this zone. Malaria control interventions ought to be strengthened and strategically designed to
achieve no malaria cases across all the altitudinal zones. Integration of climate information within malaria
interventions can also strengthen eradication strategies of malaria in such differentiated altitudinal zones.
Description
CITATION: Siya, A., et al. 2020. Malaria patterns across altitudinal zones of Mount Elgon following intensified control and prevention programs in Uganda. BMC Infectious Diseases, 20:425, doi:10.1186/s12879-020-05158-5.
The original publication is available at https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com
The original publication is available at https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com
Keywords
Malaria -- Control -- Elgon, Mount (Uganda and Kenya), Malaria -- Prevention -- Elgon, Mount (Uganda and Kenya), Communicable diseases -- Prevention
Citation
Siya, A., et al. 2020. Malaria patterns across altitudinal zones of Mount Elgon following intensified control and prevention programs in Uganda. BMC Infectious Diseases, 20:425, doi:10.1186/s12879-020-05158-5