THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND EPIDEMIOLOGICAL IN MAPPING SUSCEPTIBILITY MALARIA DISEASE IN RANAU DISTRICT USING REMOTE SENSING AND GIS

摘要

Malaria has been identified as a public health problem in Malaysia since the early 1960s. In 2011, The National Malaria Elimination Strategic Plan was introduced with the target of "zero" status for indigenous human malaria by 2020. Majority of cases in Malaysia are found in Sabah and Sarawak. Ranau district has the highest number of cases which 273 out of 1,660 total cases reported in Sabah in 2017. Most of the cases are contributed by zoonotic malaria compared to human malaria. Analysis using remote sensing and GIS techniques helps to identify the environment risk factors to malaria incidence. By using remote sensing and GIS data, this study produces the malaria susceptibility map in Ranau. Environmental and epidemiological related variables such as vegetation index (NDVI), land surface temperature (LST), soil moisture (SM), digital elevation model (DEM), land use/cover changes, distance to river, rainfall, population density and malaria cases have been used, integrated and analyzed by using multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA) method. Then, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) Pairwise Comparison is applied to assign weightage to the variables that generated malaria susceptibility map. The map was categorized into five classes: very low, low, medium, high and very high. Almost 90% of Ranau district was identified as high susceptibility area to malaria transmission. The mean accuracy of the map was assessed by using epidemiological data of incidence case in year 2017, 2016 and 2015 shows about 99.42 + 1.32 % with equivalent probability of 0.99 in high-level susceptibility of malaria for 2017 and can be used to predict the high susceptibiltity area of malaria in targeted year. The relation between malaria incidence distribution and susceptibility maps will help health policy makers to target control interventions at high susceptibility area and enhance the cost-efficiency of the program.