Effects of environmental fluctuations on the occurrence of malignant malaria - a model based study

Abstract

This paper aims to reveal the hidden structure of the disease curve involved in the available time series data on the number of Plasmodium falciparum (malignant malaria) cases. At first we try to find out the important factors which impart greater influence on the occurrence of malignant malaria and then try to fit a suitable regression model. We have taken into consideration the environmental factors like temperature, humidity and rainfall along with the total number of malaria cases as the independent variables in our first regression model. Next we have incorporated a social factor viz. monthly expenditure on Malaria Control Programme by Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), West Bengal, India into our model. A basic mathematical model on malaria with environmental fluctuations is considered to compare the qualitative nature of the proposed regression model. It is observed that Macdonald's stability index takes higher value in the presence of stochastic fluctuations. Moreover, it is concluded that social factors may be used for programme implementation in the case of disease outbreak.