Another Approach to Detect Malaria Epidemics and to Evaluate the Impact of their Control Measures in Situation of Lack of Information.
Our starting hypothesis is that environmental factors such as temperature, precipitation and vegetation levels, as estimators of the population density and infectivity of the vector and the development of the parasite, on the one hand, combined with the level of malaria incidence in a recent period, as an estimator of the magnitude of the parasite reservoir and population susceptibility, on the other, could explain variations in malaria incidence.
This study aims to create a theoretical epidemiologic threshold i.e, endemic, non-epidemic, usually
expected, normally, incidence, based on the behavior of the incidence rate predicted by a model that establishes the relations among the variables. The purpose is to obtain a simple and easily
applied tool that provides a practical and reliable way to identify epidemics, so that health services can implement timely control measures to interrupt the spread of the disease or mitigate its
effects, and to assess the effectiveness of health interventions to these ends.
Considering the methodological purpose of this study we use only real data in order to verify the validity and accuracy of our theoretical elaboration. This verification uses as empirical material the available reports of monthly malaria cases treated by the medical services routinely collected by the surveillance system, together with monthly levels of rain, temperature and vegetation density in the province of Karuzi, Burundi, during a seven years period.
Epidemiol Open J. 2016; 2(1): 7-15. doi: 10.17140/EPOJ-2-108
