Epidemiology of Desert Malaria

Abstract

AbstractEpidemiological patterns of malaria are influenced by different kinds of climate. Epidemiology of malaria may change from one region to another or even within a country from one specific population to another within the same region depending on their ecological, biological and social conditions. Since the world’s deserts are irreversibly impacted by the climate change, the epidemiology of malaria is also shifted remarkably. Knowledge of the changing epidemiological trends of desert malaria in the eliminating countries will ensure improved targeting of interventions to continue to shrink the malaria map. Epidemiologists have recently paid greater attention than in the past to the epidemiology of desert malaria owing to the fact that it may help spread infection to the neighbouring plain areas where elimination has been successfully carried out. This change of emphasis has been stimulated in part by the need for better epidemiological definitions of malaria in the evaluation of control measures such as insecticide-treated materials and malaria vaccines. Methods of determining mortality from malaria and of defining severe and uncomplicated malaria have been devised through extensive epidemiological investigations including clinical. For instance, the limited data available indicate that malaria-attributable mortality and the incidence of severe malaria do not increase with an increase in the entomological inoculation rate above a threshold value, an observation that has important implications for the likely long-term effects of attempts to contain malaria through vector control in a typical desert ecosystem which is full of challenges in establishing surveillance. Epidemiologic studies and clinical description of severe Plasmodium vivax malaria in adults living in malaria-endemic areas are rare, and more attention is needed to understand the dynamics and its interaction with the immune system.