Study shows projected climate change in West Africa not likely to worsen malaria situation
As public-health officials continue to fight malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, researchers are trying to predict how climate change will impact the disease, which infected an estimated 219 million people in 2010 and is the fifth leading cause of death worldwide among children under age 5. But projections of future malaria infection have been hampered by wide variation in rainfall predictions for the region and lack of a malaria-transmission model that adequately describes the effects of local rainfall on mosquitoes, which breed and mature in ephemeral pools that form during and after monsoons in West Africa.A new MIT study led by Elfatih Eltahir, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, combines a new model of malaria transmission with global forecasts for temperature and rainfall to improve predictions of malaria with climate change. Eltahir and graduate student Teresa Yamana found that although the capacity for malaria transmission will change...