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Assessing the Risk Factors Associated with Malaria in the Highlands of Ethiopia: What Do We Need to Know?

Malaria has been Ethiopia’s predominant communicable disease for decades. Following the catastrophic malaria outbreak in 2003–2004, the Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH) took drastic public health actions to lower the burden of malaria. The FMoH achieved significant declines in malaria mortality and...

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Autores principales: Vajda, Élodie Anne, Webb, Cameron Ewart
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6082051/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30270863
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/tropicalmed2010004
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author Vajda, Élodie Anne
Webb, Cameron Ewart
author_facet Vajda, Élodie Anne
Webb, Cameron Ewart
author_sort Vajda, Élodie Anne
collection PubMed
description Malaria has been Ethiopia’s predominant communicable disease for decades. Following the catastrophic malaria outbreak in 2003–2004, the Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH) took drastic public health actions to lower the burden of malaria. The FMoH achieved significant declines in malaria mortality and incidence, and recently declared its objective to achieve malaria elimination in low malaria transmission areas of Ethiopia by 2020. However, while the overall malaria prevalence has decreased, unpredictable outbreaks increasingly occur irregularly in regions previously considered “malaria-free”. Such outbreaks have disastrous consequences on populations of these regions as they have no immunity against malaria. The Amhara Region accounts for 31% of Ethiopia’s malaria burden and is targeted for malaria elimination by the FMoH. Amhara’s epidemiological surveillance system faces many challenges to detect in a timely manner the unpredictable and irregular malaria outbreaks that occur in areas of otherwise low transmission. Despite the evidence of a shift in malaria transmission patterns, Amhara’s malaria control interventions remain constrained to areas that are historically known to have stable malaria transmission. This paper discusses the influence of temperature and precipitation variability, entomological parameters, and human population mobility on malaria transmission patterns across the Amhara Region, and in particular, in areas of unstable transmission. We argue that malaria epidemiological surveillance systems can be improved by accounting for population movements in addition to environmental and entomological factors. However, to date, no study has statistically analyzed the interplay of population dynamics on environmental and entomological drivers of malaria transmission.
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spelling pubmed-60820512018-09-24 Assessing the Risk Factors Associated with Malaria in the Highlands of Ethiopia: What Do We Need to Know? Vajda, Élodie Anne Webb, Cameron Ewart Trop Med Infect Dis Perspective Malaria has been Ethiopia’s predominant communicable disease for decades. Following the catastrophic malaria outbreak in 2003–2004, the Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH) took drastic public health actions to lower the burden of malaria. The FMoH achieved significant declines in malaria mortality and incidence, and recently declared its objective to achieve malaria elimination in low malaria transmission areas of Ethiopia by 2020. However, while the overall malaria prevalence has decreased, unpredictable outbreaks increasingly occur irregularly in regions previously considered “malaria-free”. Such outbreaks have disastrous consequences on populations of these regions as they have no immunity against malaria. The Amhara Region accounts for 31% of Ethiopia’s malaria burden and is targeted for malaria elimination by the FMoH. Amhara’s epidemiological surveillance system faces many challenges to detect in a timely manner the unpredictable and irregular malaria outbreaks that occur in areas of otherwise low transmission. Despite the evidence of a shift in malaria transmission patterns, Amhara’s malaria control interventions remain constrained to areas that are historically known to have stable malaria transmission. This paper discusses the influence of temperature and precipitation variability, entomological parameters, and human population mobility on malaria transmission patterns across the Amhara Region, and in particular, in areas of unstable transmission. We argue that malaria epidemiological surveillance systems can be improved by accounting for population movements in addition to environmental and entomological factors. However, to date, no study has statistically analyzed the interplay of population dynamics on environmental and entomological drivers of malaria transmission. MDPI 2017-03-01 /pmc/articles/PMC6082051/ /pubmed/30270863 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/tropicalmed2010004 Text en © 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Perspective
Vajda, Élodie Anne
Webb, Cameron Ewart
Assessing the Risk Factors Associated with Malaria in the Highlands of Ethiopia: What Do We Need to Know?
title Assessing the Risk Factors Associated with Malaria in the Highlands of Ethiopia: What Do We Need to Know?
title_full Assessing the Risk Factors Associated with Malaria in the Highlands of Ethiopia: What Do We Need to Know?
title_fullStr Assessing the Risk Factors Associated with Malaria in the Highlands of Ethiopia: What Do We Need to Know?
title_full_unstemmed Assessing the Risk Factors Associated with Malaria in the Highlands of Ethiopia: What Do We Need to Know?
title_short Assessing the Risk Factors Associated with Malaria in the Highlands of Ethiopia: What Do We Need to Know?
title_sort assessing the risk factors associated with malaria in the highlands of ethiopia: what do we need to know?
topic Perspective
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6082051/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30270863
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/tropicalmed2010004
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