Federica Giardina: Geostatistical models for malaria burden estimation

Malaria transmission depends on the distribution and abundance of Anopheles mosquitoes which are sensitive to environmental and climatic conditions, such as temperature, rainfall, vegetation and land use. Geo-referenced prevalence surveys have been increasingly carried out in endemic countries to monitor the efforts in disease control. Geostatistical models can be used to estimate the environment-disease relation at fixed locations over a continuous study area and predict the burden of malaria in places where data on transmission are not available. In this talk we will discuss statistical issues arising in such models for malaria prevalence surveys with the aim of producing accurate disease burden estimation at high spatial resolution and assess the effects of control measures.