Malaria seasonality and rainfall seasonality in Sri Lanka are correlated in space

Abstract

Correlation in space between seasonality of malaria and seasonality of rainfall was studied in Sri Lanka. A simple seasonality index was developed by making use of the bimodal seasonality of both malaria and rainfall. The malaria seasonality index was regressed against the rainfall seasonality index taking spatial autocorrelation into account. Despite the presence of spatial autocorrelation, the coefficient for the rainfall seasonality index in explaining the malaria seasonality index was found to be significant. The results suggest that rainfall is an important driver of malaria seasonality.

Keywords

• malaria, rain, seasonality, spatial autocorrelation, Sri Lanka.