Modeling the occurrence and incidence of malaria cases: a case study at Obuasi Government Hospital
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Date
2012-06-20
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Abstract
Malaria has always been a major a major health problem and therefore timely and accurate information about its occurrence and incidence cannot be underestimated. The main objectives of this research is to model the occurrence of malaria cases given the age, gender and time in quarters ; to model the incidence of severe malaria cases given age , gender and time in years and lastly to validate the two models using negative binomial regression model. Poisson and negative binomial regression models were used in fitting the data obtained from Obuasi Government Hospital data based dated 2007 to 2010. Based on the results, the negative binomial regression model fitted the data better than the Poisson regression model. Both models indicated that malaria is independent of gender. With respect to time, more cases were recorded in quarters4 (October-December) in the first model and the incidence of severe malaria cases also increased with time in the second model. The prevalence of malaria and severe malaria cases were found to be prevalent among children with less than 1 year old, and those under 5 and 70+years old. More cases were recorded for those found 20-34 year groups with reference to occurrence of malaria and incidence of severe malaria cases. Consequently, we draw a conclusion that despite the various interventions such as the Internal Residual Mass Spraying (I R M S) exercise by the Malaria Control Programme of AngloGold Ashanti introduced in 2006 and other social programmes aimed at reducing the menace of malaria, it’s still remains high particularly among children under 5 years and those found between 20-34 age groups.
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A thesis submitted to the Department of Mathematics, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the Degree of Master of Philosophy
Keywords
Ghana, Malaria, Poisson, Negetive binomial