Impact of future climate change on malaria in West Africa

Abstract

Understanding the regional impact of future climate change is one of the major global challenges of this century. This study investigated possible effects of climate change on malaria in West Africa in the near future (2006–2035) and the far future (2036–2065) under two representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5), compared to an observed evaluation period (1981–2010). Projected rainfall and temperature were obtained from the coordinated regional downscaling experiment (CORDEX) simulations of the Rossby Centre Regional Atmospheric regional climate model (RCA4). The malaria model used is the Liverpool malaria model (LMM), a dynamical malaria model driven by daily time series of rainfall and temperature obtained from the CORDEX data. Our results highlight the unimodal shape of the malaria prevalence distribution, and the seasonal malaria transmission contrast is closely linked to the latitudinal variation of the rainfall. Projections showed that the mean annual malaria prevalence would decrease in both climatological periods under both RCPs but with a larger magnitude of decreasing under the RCP8.5. We found that the mean malaria prevalence for the reference period is greater than the projected prevalence for 6 of the 8 downscaled GCMs. The study enhances understanding of how malaria is impacted under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 emission scenarios. These results indicate that the southern area of West Africa is at most risk of epidemics, and the malaria control programs need extra effort and help to make the best use of available resources by stakeholders.

Influence of Climate Change on Vector-borne disease (Malaria) in India

“…Our conclusion, which suggests that the future climate may become slightly uninhabitable for malaria vectors, aligns well with other recent studies like those by (Diouf et al 2022;Parihar et al 2022) and the study conducted by (Sharma et al 2022) that demonstrated a decline in malaria cases over the past decade. Nevertheless, our research offers more consistency in terms of monthly variations, highlighting the postmonsoon period as the most suitable habitat for malaria transmission across India, consistent with (Kumar et al 2014;Lauderdale et al 2014;Epopa et al 2019;.…”

Future malaria environmental suitability in Africa is sensitive to hydrology

“…There is also a greater sensitivity of malaria outcomes to the choice of RCP when hydrology is simulated explicitly. There is general agreement that malaria transmission will decrease across much of West Africa, as also predicted in previous studies (e.g., 13 , 18 , 20 , 47 ), although when the hydrological processes that determine viable vector habitat formation are modeled explicitly, estimates for transmission decrease more extensively. The warming and drying trends underlying this decrease in areas suitable for malaria themselves present profound environmental and social challenges ( 48 ), including other predictions that this trend will increase dengue suitability ( 49 ).…”

Assessing transmission patterns of flood-related waterborne diseases in two urban municipalities of Côte d’Ivoire

“…Therefore, a study conducted in the northern part of Côte d'Ivoire showed that the strong seasonality of climate variables (10 mm of monthly precipitation) increases the number of clinical malaria episodes (M' Bra et al, 2018). Malaria infections are a broad concern in West Africa, because a recent study showed that seasonal malaria transmission is associated with the latitudinal variation of the rainfall, and the southern area of West Africa is at-risk of malaria epidemics (Diouf et al, 2022). Furthermore, this study in Abidjan showed that open defecation practices were reported despite the low percentage of open defecation reported in our study, and the effects of open defecation are guring high globally.…”