Impact of increased temperature on malaria transmission in Burundi

The focus in this paper is to assess whether the increase in (global) temperature would result in increase in malaria transmission in Burundi. The analysis carried out in this work exploits real data collected in Burundi, namely monthly rainfall, temperature and humidity data as well as monthly malaria morbidity data for the period 1996-2007. We propose a Bayesian Generalised Additive Model (GAM) to assess the impact of increase in temperature on malaria transmission. The results suggest that although malaria transmission is positively associated with minimum temperature and maximum humidity, increasing temperature in Burundi will not result in increasing malaria transmission.

Keywords: Burundi, malaria transmission, climate change, Bayesian GAM, generalised additive model, modelling, global warming, temperature rise, Burundi, rainfall, humidity, malaria morbidity data, precipitation, temperature increase