The efficacy of violence mitigation: A second look using time-series analysis

Bock, Joseph G.

doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2009.05.005

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…These factors can also affect the spatially (hidden trends) and especially non-spatially correlated variance (known as the nugget variance in geostatistics, or measurement error), which account for 11 % of the sill (the total amount of variance given by the sum of non-spatially correlated variance and spatially correlated variance in the residuals) [ 54 ]. On the other hand, the large amount of spatially correlated variance (the remaining 89 %) confirms the importance of spatiotemporal autocorrelation in malaria surveys [ 55 ] and conflict events [ 56 ] and in general for malaria transmission statistical analyses [ 11 , 31 , 42 , 45 , 57 ]. In this study, the optimization of the variogram based on the distances between conflicts and variance in the malaria surveys (Eq.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 89%

A geostatistical analysis of the association between armed conflicts and Plasmodium falciparum malaria in Africa, 1997–2010

Sedda

Tatem

2015

Malar J

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BackgroundThe absence of conflict in a country has been cited as a crucial factor affecting the operational feasibility of achieving malaria control and elimination, yet mixed evidence exists on the influence that conflicts have had on malaria transmission. Over the past two decades, Africa has seen substantial numbers of armed conflicts of varying length and scale, creating conditions that can disrupt control efforts and impact malaria transmission. However, very few studies have quantitatively assessed the associations between conflicts and malaria transmission, particularly in a consistent way across multiple countries.MethodsIn this analysis an explicit geostatistical, autoregressive, mixed model is employed to quantitatively assess the association between conflicts and variations in Plasmodium falciparum parasite prevalence across a 13-year period in sub-Saharan Africa.ResultsAnalyses of geolocated, malaria prevalence survey variations against armed conflict data in general showed a wide, but short-lived impact of conflict events geographically. The number of countries with decreased P. falciparum parasite prevalence (17) is larger than the number of countries with increased transmission (12), and notably, some of the countries with the highest transmission pre-conflict were still found with lower transmission post-conflict. For four countries, there were no significant changes in parasite prevalence. Finally, distance from conflicts, duration of conflicts, violence of conflict, and number of conflicts were significant components in the model explaining the changes in P. falciparum parasite rate.ConclusionsThe results suggest that the maintenance of intervention coverage and provision of healthcare in conflict situations to protect vulnerable populations can maintain gains in even the most difficult of circumstances, and that conflict does not represent a substantial barrier to elimination goals.

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