Identification

Title

Climate influences on meningitis incidence in northwest Nigeria

Abstract

Northwest Nigeria is a region with a high risk of meningitis. In this study, the influence of climate on monthly meningitis incidence was examined. Monthly counts of clinically diagnosed hospital-reported cases of meningitis were collected from three hospitals in northwest Nigeria for the 22-yr period spanning 1990-2011. Generalized additive models and generalized linear models were fitted to aggregated monthly meningitis counts. Explanatory variables included monthly time series of maximum and minimum temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind speed, sunshine, and dustiness from weather stations nearest to the hospitals, and the number of cases in the previous month. The effects of other unobserved seasonally varying climatic and nonclimatic risk factors that may be related to the disease were collectively accounted for as a flexible monthly varying smooth function of time in the generalized additive models, s(t). Results reveal that the most important explanatory climatic variables are the monthly means of daily maximum temperature, relative humidity, and sunshine with no lag; and dustiness with a 1-month lag. Accounting for s(t) in the generalized additive models explains more of the monthly variability of meningitis compared to those generalized linear models that do not account for the unobserved factors that s(t) represents. The skill score statistics of a model version with all explanatory variables lagged by 1 month suggest the potential to predict meningitis cases in northwest Nigeria up to a month in advance to aid decision makers.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d76d5tx2

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

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keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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Temporal reference

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End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2014-01-01T00:00:00Z

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Use constraints

Copyright 2014 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

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None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact