Spatial Modeling of Annual Parasite Incidence of Malaria in Sistan and Balouchistan by Province Geographical Weighted Regression

Malaria is a vector born disease caused by protozoan parasites of the genus Plasmodium that causes 300-500 million new infections and 1 million deaths annually.Before any anti-malarial campaign in Iran, about 60% of the population were living in malaria endemic areas and 4 to 5 million of them had malaria infection each year. By starting of the anti-malaria campaign, the number of infections decreased so that the number of malaria infected in Iran was 3000 people in 2009, 0/65 of them lived in Sistan & Baluchistan province. In the present study, for spatial modeling of the Annual Parasite Incidence (API) of malaria in Sistan & Baluchistan province, we applied a Geographical Weighted Regression (GWR) model to predict API by there independent climatic factors. The results indicated that the most important climatic factor for explaining API in Sistan & Baluchistan is annual rainfall as spatial factor, which is more important in the southern parts of the study area such as Chabahar and Nikshar. Temperature and relative humidity are of the second and third prioriies, respectively. The importance of these two climatic factors is higher in northern portion of the province. This model explained only 0.48 of API spatial variation (R²=0.48). Therefore, the non-climatic factors such as socioeconomic and lifestyle and the neighborhood position of this province with Afghanistan and Pakistan should also be considered in epidemiological survey of malaria in Sistan & Baluchistan province.