Epidemiological Trends of Malaria in Five Years and under Children of Nsanje District in Malawi, 2015–2019
Theodore Gondwe, Yongi Yang, Simeon Yosefe, Maisa Kasanga, Griffin Mulula, Mphatso Prince Luwemba, Annie Jere, Victor Daka, Tobela Mudenda
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Malaria continues to be a major public health problem in Malawi and the greatest load of mortality and morbidity occurs in children five years and under. However, there is no information yet regarding trends and predictions of malaria incidence in children five years and under at district hospital level, particularly at Nsanje district hospital. AIM: Therefore, this study aimed at investigating the trends of malaria morbidity and mortality in order to design appropriate interventions on the best approach to contain the disease in the near future. METHODOLOGY: Trend analysis of malaria morbidity and mortality together with time series analysis using the SARIMA (Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average) model was used to predict malaria incidence in Nsanje district. RESULTS: was suitable for forecasting the incidence of malaria for Nsanje. CONCLUSION: The mortality and morbidity trend showed that malaria cases were growing at a fluctuating rate at Nsanje district hospital. The relative errors between the actual values and predicted values indicated that the predicted values matched the actual values well. Therefore, the model proved that it was adequate to forecast monthly malaria cases and it had a good fit, hence, was appropriate for this study.