Association between Malaria and Local Climate Variabiliy In Jos, North-Central, and Kano, Northwest, Nigeria

Malaria is a significant public health problem in Nigeria. Despite the awareness of the prevalence of this disease and efforts at combating it, malaria occurrence keeps increasing across regions in Nigeria. This prevalence can be linked to mostly climatic and environmental factors. This study explored how local weather/climate variability impact on malaria prevalence in Jos, North central and Kano, North western Nigeria. Data on monthly malaria cases from 1997 to 2012 were obtained from the hospital archives and consulting room record books. The hospital is Abdullahi Wase Specialist Hospital, Kano a standard state government hospital that is situated in the Centre of the city. Also, same data were collected from Plateau state general hospital, Jos. Local weather factors including rainfall, relative humidity, minimum and maximum temperature were considered in the analyses. Time series methods were applied to evaluate the associations of malaria incidence with weather /climate factors to identify specific local weather condition enhancing the increasing prevalence. The results showed that malaria incidence was associated with local weather factors in Jos and Kano but at different lag times and in directions. The results suggest local weather factors strongly affect malaria occurrence in Jos than Kano. Therefore for effective malaria control, interventions could be synchronized with some important climatic predictors of the disease for greater impact and reduce the prevalence of the disease.

Keywords: Malaria, Weather, Climate, Kano, Jos, Time series