Meteorological Factors Affecting the Prediction of the Number of Dengue Cases Reported in Anuradhapura District

Abstract

Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne viral infection rapidly spreading in the world by the vector Aedes aegypti mosquito. Day by day, new dengue cases are reported in Sri Lanka, and hence the risk of dengue exists throughout the country. Besides, the lowest amount of dengue cases in Sri Lanka was reported from the North Central province. Thus, this study focuses on the Anuradhapura district, the capital of the North Central Province. The main objectives of this study are to identify the weather factors affecting the number of dengue cases, investigate the variability and trends of reported dengue cases, identify the correlation between the number of dengue cases and weather factors reported in the Anuradhapura district. The weather data from 2010-2019 was collected from the Department of Meteorology-Sri Lanka, and the dengue cases data was collected from the Epidemiology Unit of the Ministry of Health. Bar charts, pie charts, line graphs and time series plots were used to visualize the data. The normality assumption of the data was checked using Anderson-Darling normality tests. Moreover, Pearson correlation tests were used to check the correlations between variables. The number of dengue cases and the rainfall were forecast for the upcoming years using a trend analysis method. Stepwise regression analysis was performed to identify the weather factors affecting the number of dengue cases and Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) values were used to select the best model. Further, Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) values were calculated to find the prediction accuracy of the proposed models