Comparative Analysis on Applicability of Satellite and Meteorological Data for Prediction of Malaria in Endemic Area in Bangladesh

Authors

Atiqur Rahman, CUNY City College
Leonid Roytman, NOAA/NESDIS
Mitch Goldberg, NOAA/NESDIS
Felix Kogan, NOAA/NESDIS

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

January 2010

Abstract

Relationships between yearly malaria incidence and (1) climate data from weather station and (2) satellite-based vegetation health (VH) indices were investigated for prediction of malaria vector activities in Bangladesh. Correlation analysis of percent of malaria cases with Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer- (AVHRR-) based VH indices represented by the vegetation condition index (VCI—moisture condition) and the temperature condition index (TCI—estimates thermal condition) and with rainfall, relative humidity, and temperature from ground-based meteorological stations. Results show that climate data from weather stations are poorly correlated and are not applicable to estimate prevalence in Bangladesh. The study also has shown that AVHRR-based vegetation health (VH) indices are highly applicable for malaria trend assessment and also for the estimation of the total number of malaria cases in Bangladesh for the period of 1992–2001.

Comments

This work was originally published in Journal of Tropical Medicine, available at doi:10.1155/2010/914094.