Decline in malaria incidence in a typical county of China: Role of climate variance and anti-malaria intervention measures

Journal Article · Thu Nov 15 04:00:00 EST 2018 · Environmental Research

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/J.ENVRES.2018.07.031· OSTI ID:23110599

Liu, Jianing; Wu, Xiaoxu; Li, Chenlu ^[1]; Zhou, Sen ^[2]

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1. State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, College of Global Change and Earth System Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875 (China)
2. Post-doctoral Research Station of Chinese Academy of Social Science, Beijing 100028 (China)

Highlights: • Malaria incidence shows a steeply interannual decline and an obvious seasonality. • Malaria incidence highly correlates to temperature, precipitation and humidity. • Two favorable climate conditions are determined for high incidence of malaria. • There is good agreement between a decreasing malaria incidence and slightly declined climate variance in epidemic months. • Malaria incidence is declined rapidly because of the persistent progress of anti-malaria interventions. Malaria is an important vector-borne disease which is widespread in tropical and subtropical areas worldwide as well as in south China. Previous research has separately focused on the association between malaria incidence and meteorological variables or between malaria incidence and anti-malaria intervention measures in China, especially in Yunnan Province. Therefore, a typical county, Tengchong County, in Yunnan Province with high malaria incidence was selected as the study area to investigate the integrated influence of climate variance and anti-malaria intervention measures. Malaria incidence and meteorological variables were analyzed with a 2-month lag. The variables include average monthly temperature, minimum temperature, maximum temperature, cumulative precipitation, wind speed, maximum wind speed, relative humidity and minimum relative humidity. First, the principal component analysis was introduced to investigate the relationship between malaria incidence and meteorological variables; classification and regression trees were used to clarify contributions of key meteorological variables to malaria incidence afterwards. Second, based on existing anti-malaria intervention measures and above results, the integrated impact of climate variance and anti-malaria interventions on interannual trends of malaria incidence was analyzed. High malaria incidence occurred under one of the two meteorological conditions: 1) high minimum temperature combined with high minimum relative humidity or both precipitation and minimum relative humidity above middle level; 2) middle minimum temperature combined with both precipitation and minimum relative humidity below middle levels. Moreover, the steep interannual decline of malaria incidence in Tengchong was determined by slight climate variance and persistent anti-malaria intervention measures during malaria epidemics, predominantly by the latter. These findings will provide evidence data for developing malaria surveillance strategies in China.

• OSTI ID: 23110599
• Journal Information: Environmental Research, Journal Name: Environmental Research Vol. 167; ISSN ENVRAL; ISSN 0013-9351
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
CHINA
CLIMATES
CLIMATIC CHANGE
HUMIDITY
INSPECTION
MALARIA
METEOROLOGY
PRINCIPAL COMPONENT ANALYSIS
TREES
VECTORS
WIND