IMPACTS OF CLIMATE VARIABILITY ON MALARIA TRENDS IN RWANDA

Abstract

In recent years malaria was observed to be global health issue in 21st century because 3.3 billion people were at risk malaria of malaria in 2010. I this year, the populations living in sub-Saharan Africa have the highest risk of acquiring malaria where 81% of cases and 91% of deaths are estimated to have occurred in the WHO African Region. The social and economic costs of malaria were also huge and include considerable costs to individuals and households as well as high costs at community and national levels where the economic burden of malaria is estimated as an average annual reduction in economic growth of 1.3% for those African countries. In Rwanda, malaria burden has significantly reduced from 2005 to 2011 due to successful implementation and scale-up of malaria control interventions. However, since 2012, malaria incidence increased every year in Rwanda from 48 per 1,000 in 2012 to 403 per 1,000 in 2016. The research is aiming at investigating the role of climatic parameters in that unusual increase of malaria morbidity in Rwanda. The study utilized malaria morbidity and meteorological data that were collected in Rwanda Biomedical Center (RBC) from 2011 to 2017 from the health centers. The collected data were analyzed using time-series analysis and Pearson’s correlation analysis. Both time series analysis and statistical analysis were analysed using Python 3.6.1 and MS Excel 2013. The researcher found that among the selected climatic parameters, the results shown that malaria morbidity trend in the study area was influenced by the maximum temperature in lowlands (Busoro at 29% and Rukara at 17.9%) and minimum temperature in highlands (Bungwe). The other parameters (rainfall and relative humidity) was observed to affect malaria morbidity positively or negatively but were not the indicators of malaria morbidity trend in the surveillance period. Adaptive strategies should be put in place in the study areas in order reduce malaria morbidity trend and also on the whole country. It is recommended also to consider the climate variability in malaria interventions because climate variability occurrences are common issue and will continue to affect the health sector in case of malaria cases and economic loss due to different malaria interventions. The further researches were also recommended on the other parameters both climatic and non-climatic to reveal their impact on malaria morbidity trend in the study sites during the same surveillance period.