Rainfall and malaria outbreaks in western Rajasthan

Akhtar, Rais; Aj, McMichael

doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(04)70109-9

Cited by 46 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…In arid and semiarid regions of India, where malaria is epidemic, rainfall variability has been shown to drive the interannual variability of the disease (Akhtar and McMichael 1996; Bouma and van der Kaay 1994; Laneri et al 2010) and was the basis of one of the first early-warning systems for the disease in this region. Evidence suggests that rainfall variability plays an important role and that a long-term trend in increasing temperature during the 20th century is sufficient to significantly increase the abundance of vectors (Pascual et al 2009).…”

Section: Impacts In Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of Climate Change on Public Health in India: Future Research Directions

Bush

Luber

Kotha

et al. 2011

Environ Health Perspect

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BackgroundClimate change and associated increases in climate variability will likely further exacerbate global health disparities. More research is needed, particularly in developing countries, to accurately predict the anticipated impacts and inform effective interventions.ObjectivesBuilding on the information presented at the 2009 Joint Indo–U.S. Workshop on Climate Change and Health in Goa, India, we reviewed relevant literature and data, addressed gaps in knowledge, and identified priorities and strategies for future research in India.DiscussionThe scope of the problem in India is enormous, based on the potential for climate change and variability to exacerbate endemic malaria, dengue, yellow fever, cholera, and chikungunya, as well as chronic diseases, particularly among the millions of people who already experience poor sanitation, pollution, malnutrition, and a shortage of drinking water. Ongoing efforts to study these risks were discussed but remain scant. A universal theme of the recommendations developed was the importance of improving the surveillance, monitoring, and integration of meteorological, environmental, geospatial, and health data while working in parallel to implement adaptation strategies.ConclusionsIt will be critical for India to invest in improvements in information infrastructure that are innovative and that promote interdisciplinary collaborations while embarking on adaptation strategies. This will require unprecedented levels of collaboration across diverse institutions in India and abroad. The data can be used in research on the likely impacts of climate change on health that reflect India’s diverse climates and populations. Local human and technical capacities for risk communication and promoting adaptive behavior must also be enhanced.

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Section: Impacts In Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of Climate Change on Public Health in India: Future Research Directions

Bush

Luber

Kotha

et al. 2011

Environ Health Perspect

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“…Outbreaks of gastrointestinal infections usually result when people are exposed to increased amounts and diverse types of pathogens, including Giardia lamblia , Cryptosporidium [21], and enterovirus [23]–[24] after heavy precipitation. Furthermore, previous studies indicated the impact of precipitation on mosquito-borne, tick-borne, and rodent-borne diseases such as dengue fever, West Nile fever, Japanese encephalitis, Chikungunya fever, malaria, Lyme borreliosis , and hantavirus infection, especially when there was the concurrent presence of high temperatures [19], [26]–[29].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Extreme Precipitation to the Distribution of Infectious Diseases in Taiwan, 1994–2008

Chen

Lin

Wu³

et al. 2012

PLoS ONE

123

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The incidence of extreme precipitation has increased with the exacerbation of worldwide climate disruption. We hypothesize an association between precipitation and the distribution patterns that would affect the endemic burden of 8 infectious diseases in Taiwan, including water- and vector-borne infectious diseases. A database integrating daily precipitation and temperature, along with the infectious disease case registry for all 352 townships in the main island of Taiwan was analysed for the period from 1994 to 2008. Four precipitation levels, <130 mm, 130–200 mm, 200–350 mm and >350 mm, were categorized to represent quantitative differences, and their associations with each specific disease was investigated using the Generalized Additive Mixed Model and afterwards mapped on to the Geographical Information System. Daily precipitation levels were significantly correlated with all 8 mandatory-notified infectious diseases in Taiwan. For water-borne infections, extreme torrential precipitation (>350 mm/day) was found to result in the highest relative risk for bacillary dysentery and enterovirus infections when compared to ordinary rain (<130 mm/day). Yet, for vector-borne diseases, the relative risk of dengue fever and Japanese encephalitis increased with greater precipitation only up to 350 mm. Differential lag effects following precipitation were statistically associated with increased risk for contracting individual infectious diseases. This study’s findings can help health resource sector management better allocate medical resources and be better prepared to deal with infectious disease outbreaks following future extreme precipitation events.

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“…After the malaria eradication efforts in India were abandoned in the 1970s, the epidemic belt shifted to the more arid and increasingly populous regions of Gujarat and Rajasthan. In the last decades the severity of these epidemics have made developing a MEWS based on rainfall [19] and rainfall forecasts [20] a public health priority. Quantifying the role of climate variability, and doing so in the context of epidemiological dynamics, remains an important open problem for these regions and for epidemic malaria in general.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forcing Versus Feedback: Epidemic Malaria and Monsoon Rains in Northwest India

et al. 2010

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Malaria epidemics in regions with seasonal windows of transmission can vary greatly in size from year to year. A central question has been whether these interannual cycles are driven by climate, are instead generated by the intrinsic dynamics of the disease, or result from the resonance of these two mechanisms. This corresponds to the more general inverse problem of identifying the respective roles of external forcings vs. internal feedbacks from time series for nonlinear and noisy systems. We propose here a quantitative approach to formally compare rival hypotheses on climate vs. disease dynamics, or external forcings vs. internal feedbacks, that combines dynamical models with recently developed, computational inference methods. The interannual patterns of epidemic malaria are investigated here for desert regions of northwest India, with extensive epidemiological records for Plasmodium falciparum malaria for the past two decades. We formulate a dynamical model of malaria transmission that explicitly incorporates rainfall, and we rely on recent advances on parameter estimation for nonlinear and stochastic dynamical systems based on sequential Monte Carlo methods. Results show a significant effect of rainfall in the inter-annual variability of epidemic malaria that involves a threshold in the disease response. The model exhibits high prediction skill for yearly cases in the malaria transmission season following the monsoonal rains. Consideration of a more complex model with clinical immunity demonstrates the robustness of the findings and suggests a role of infected individuals that lack clinical symptoms as a reservoir for transmission. Our results indicate that the nonlinear dynamics of the disease itself play a role at the seasonal, but not the interannual, time scales. They illustrate the feasibility of forecasting malaria epidemics in desert and semi-arid regions of India based on climate variability. This approach should be applicable to malaria in other locations, to other infectious diseases, and to other nonlinear systems under forcing.

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Rainfall and malaria outbreaks in western Rajasthan

Cited by 46 publications

References 4 publications

Impacts of Climate Change on Public Health in India: Future Research Directions

Impacts of Climate Change on Public Health in India: Future Research Directions

Effects of Extreme Precipitation to the Distribution of Infectious Diseases in Taiwan, 1994–2008

Forcing Versus Feedback: Epidemic Malaria and Monsoon Rains in Northwest India

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