Forecasting Dengue Incidence in Tamil Nadu, India: An Time series Analysis

Abstract

Background: The incidence of dengue has grown dramatically around the world in recent decades. As per World Health Organization (WHO) recent estimates, 390 million dengue infections occur per year, of which 96 million manifest clinically. India had reported a total of 1, 57,220 dengue cases and 250 deaths during the year 2017. Maximum number of cases (23,035) and deaths (63) due to Dengue were reported in Tamil Nadu. Dengue cases in Tamil Nadu have risen nearly 10 times and deaths due to the disease 12 times compared with last year. Methods: We adopted an Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) models on the data collected from 1997 to 2017. The data has been used to predict the number of cases till December 2025 without any additional intervention. Results: The results also showed an increasing trend in the actual and forecasted numbers of Dengue cases. The appropriate ARIMA (0, 1, 1) model was selected based on Bayesian Information Criteria (BIC) values. Conclusions: Hence, to prevent the disease from getting established as an endemic in Tamilnadu, additional interventions with an increase in the intensity of existing interventions and support of the international community along with WHO is essential to stop the epidemic.