Spatial Analysis of Malaria

Malaria has become a great concern globally and has impacted negatively on the economies of developing nations. Health workers generally are unable to identify high or risk areas in the areas they operate so as to tailor interventions and do effective health monitoring. Research conducted so far by medical and climate professionals have either lacked knowledge or showed less concern for the variation of the climate conditions that accompany the transmission of malaria. The geographical distribution of any major disease forms an important basis for locating appropriate interventions for its control and a means to monitoring their effectiveness. There is a need for a risk map to draw attention to hot spots and areas where intervention measures can be tailored to improve the monitoring of the occurrences, distribution and control of malaria in different geographical areas and time periods. In this book Geographic information System (GIS) and other spatial statistical approach like Bayesian and Poison methods is utilized to correlate the factors that are associated with these spatial and temporal heterogeneity of malaria transmission at the different geographic locations.