Grover-Kopec Emily K, Blumenthal M Benno, Ceccato Pietro, Dinku Tufa, Omumbo Judy A, Connor Stephen J
International Research Institute for Climate and Society, The Earth Institute at Columbia University, Lamont Campus, 61 Route 9W, Palisades, New York 10964, USA.
Malar J. 2006 May 11;5:38. doi: 10.1186/1475-2875-5-38.
Malaria remains a major public health threat to more than 600 million Africans and its control is recognized as critical to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. The greatest burden of malaria in Africa occurs in the endemic regions where the disease pathogen is continuously present in the community. These regions are characterized by an environment that is conducive to interactions between the Anopheles mosquito, malaria parasites and human hosts, as well as housing of generally poor quality, which offers little protection from mosquito-human contact. Epidemic malaria tends to occur along the geographical margins of endemic regions, when the equilibrium between the human, parasite and mosquito vector populations is occasionally disturbed and a sharp but temporary increase in disease incidence results. When malaria control measures are inadequate, as is the case in much of sub-Saharan Africa, the disease distribution is closely linked with seasonal patterns of the climate and local environment. In the absence of good epidemiological data on malaria distribution in Africa, climate information has long been used to develop malaria risk maps that illustrate the boundaries of 'climatic suitability for endemic transmission.' The best known of these are produced by the Pan-African-based MARA Collaboration. This paper describes the development of additional malaria suitability maps which have been produced in an online, interactive format to enable temporal information (i.e., seasonality of climate conditions) to be queried and displayed along with spatial information. These maps and the seasonal information that they contain should be useful to the malaria control and health service communities for their planning and operational activities.
疟疾仍然是对6亿多非洲人构成重大公共卫生威胁的疾病，其防治被认为对实现千年发展目标至关重要。非洲疟疾负担最重的地区是疾病病原体在社区持续存在的流行区。这些地区的特点是环境有利于按蚊、疟原虫和人类宿主之间的相互作用，而且住房质量普遍较差，几乎无法防止蚊虫与人类接触。流行性疟疾往往发生在流行区的地理边缘，此时人类、寄生虫和蚊媒种群之间的平衡偶尔受到干扰，导致疾病发病率急剧但暂时上升。当疟疾防治措施不力时，如撒哈拉以南非洲大部分地区的情况，疾病分布与气候和当地环境的季节性模式密切相关。由于缺乏关于非洲疟疾分布的良好流行病学数据，长期以来气候信息一直被用于绘制疟疾风险地图，以说明“适合地方性传播的气候”边界。其中最著名的是由总部位于泛非的疟疾风险评估合作组织（MARA Collaboration）制作的。本文描述了以在线交互式格式制作的其他疟疾适宜性地图的开发情况，以便能够查询和显示时间信息（即气候条件的季节性）以及空间信息。这些地图及其所含的季节性信息对于疟疾防治和卫生服务机构的规划及业务活动应是有用的。
