Temperature Regime and Malaria Cases in Orlu Area of Imo State Nigeria

Abstract

The earth's climate is becoming increasingly warmer, most likely due to increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Climate variation is driven by uneven distribution of solar heating, the individual responses of the atmosphere, oceans and land surface, the interactions between these and the physical characteristics of the regions. Climate, more especially temperature has a strong and direct influence on development, reproduction and survival of tropical insects such as mosquitoes. Insect population growth potentials are mainly temperature driven, so a rise in temperature may either increase or decrease insect development. This paper highlights the influence of temperature on malaria cases in Orlu Macro-climate in Imo state of Nigeria. It employed the use of 20 years (1991-2010) temperature data of Orlu from Nigerian Meteorological agency and 20 years data on malaria cases in Orlu collected from the (9) nine health centers located within Orlu Local Government Area. In the correlation analysis, adopting Pearson's correlation coefficient method, there was stability in high temperature regime with stable increases in malaria cases. Therefore, the results show that more than 50% of the malaria cases were, influenced by increase in temperature in the area. This means that temperature enhances mosquito breed, which causes spread of malaria in the environment. Hence, evidence of climate variability in Nigeria includes increasing heat waves, which enhances disease vectors, communicable diseases and epidemics. However, the people try to prevent the spread of malaria in the environment to some extent, but the study suggested more measures that are preventive.

Evaluating the Effects of Climate and Environmental Factors on Under-5 Children Malaria Spatial Distribution Using Generalized Additive Models (GAMs)

“…However, among the sub-Saharan African countries, Nigeria has the highest share of the global burden of malaria disease [3]. More than 95% of the malaria cases in Nigeria are caused by P. falciparum [10][11][12], mostly occurring in children under the age of 5 years [3,10,12]. At present almost more than 70% of the Nigerian population live in endemic areas [13,14].…”

“…A challenge in studying malaria risk in Nigeria is the heterogeneity of the prevalence, which is attributed to high variability in climate conditions as well as the landscape [2,16]. Few published studies in Nigeria have linked malaria prevalence to several influencing factors, including climate and environmental conditions [2,10,11,13,15,[17][18][19][20], socioeconomic factors [15,[21][22][23], geographical factors [10,[13][14][15]18,24], and control strategies as well as prevalence of other febrile illnesses [22,[25][26][27]. Additionally, several authors in other malaria endemic countries have investigated the correlation between malaria and important meteorological variables as observed in Venezuela [6][7][8][9], in Zimbabwe [28], in Zambia [29,30], in Côte D'Ivoire [31], in Ghana [32], in Burundi [33], in Ethiopia [34,35] and many more.…”

Modeling the Effect of Meteorological Parameters on Malaria Epidemiology: Identification of an Optimal Model for Application

“…Different research works have been conducted to evaluate the impact of temperature on malaria incidence. Studies carried out in Kebbi State by [18]; in Orlu, Imo State by [19]; in Enugu State by [20]; in Plateau State by [21]; in Abuja, Nigeria by [22] revealed that temperature had a significant impact on malaria transmission whereas [23] reported no significant impact.…”