Describing Interventions and modelling malaria risk in Southern Africa

• Forschungsstelle: TPH
• Projektnummer: 6.05
• Projekttitel Englisch: Describing Interventions and modelling malaria risk in Southern Africa

Schlüsselwörter (Englisch)

Malaria, Southern Africa, Transmission

Kurzbeschreibung (Englisch)

Malaria situations worldwide are very diverse because of many factors involved in malaria transmission and the great variety of their local combinations. These include among others climatic, ecologic, social, economic and cultural factors. As such a number of epidemiological approaches have been used to try and reduce malaria situations to a manageable number of types and classes for the purpose of description, planning and development of appropriate control strategies. In Africa the intensity of malaria transmission has been linked to the risk of disease and is said to determine both the clinical spectrum and the age profile of severe malaria (Snow et al. 1994; Snow et al. 1997). However, changes in transmission of malaria in both time and space in certain regions in sub Saharan Africa compound the description of malaria risk. In Southern Africa, for example, the disease is characterized by regular seasonal oscillations alternating irregularly with high incidence periods (WHO-SAMC 2002). Existing and new epidemiological models accounting for these complexities are useful tools with which to describe the dynamics of malaria risk and assess the status of exposed populations, answering both public health planners and malaria researchers (Concre et al. 2000). The proposed work aims to look at the extent and impact of malaria control in southern Africa. Define and map seasonality using malaria case data in the region. Describe the interaction between transmission intensity, rate of infection and disease risk pattern by fitting disease data into mathematical models using statistical methods.

Projektziele (Englisch)

Description of malaria interventions and their effects in Southern Africa; modeling of malaria transmission intensity using data on incidence of clinical cases.

Abstract (Englisch)

The project is investigating transmission and disease risk aspects of malaria epidemiology in selected countries in Southern Africa, based on available data collected as part of the mapping Malaria Risk in Africa / Atlas du Risque de la Malaria en Afrique (MARA/ARMA). The work on the thesis will be carried out partly at the Medical Research Council, Durban, South Africa, where M. Mabaso is currently employed as a junior scientist, and partly at the Swiss Tropical Institute, Basel.

Publikationen / Ergebnisse (Englisch)

Mabaso M L, Craig M, Vounatsou P, Smith T. Towards empirical description of malaria seasonality in southern Africa: the example of Zimbabwe. Trop Med Int Health; (10): 909-918,2005

Mabaso ML, Vounatsou P, Midzi S, Da Silva J, Smith T. Spatio-temporal analysis of the role of climate in inter-annual variation of malaria incidence in Zimbabwe. International Journal of Health Geographics 5:20, 2006.

Mabaso ML, Craig M, Ross A, Smith T. Environmental predictors of the seasonality of malaria transmission in Africa: the challenge. American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 76, 33-38, 2007.

Mabaso ML, Kleinschmidt I, Sharp B, Smith T. El-Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and annual malaria incidence in Southern Africa. Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg, 101, 326-330, 2007.