Geographic information system based malaria risk analysis and mapping in Erer District eastern Ethiopia

Abstract Background: Erer is one of the districts in Ethiopia where the first malaria transmission season occurs. Although the focus on malaria research has increasingly gained ground, little emphasis has been given to develop quantitative methods for assessing malaria hazard and risk in a temporal and spatial perspective. Objective: To characterize and examine the temporal and spatial malaria trend. The research also aims at producing a predictive model of malaria hazard and risk in Erer district. Methods: In this study a cross sectional research design was used. It was carried out through the collection of both quantitative and qualitative data about the nature of malaria and household’s response towards it. A multi-stage sampling method was used and 136 sample size was determined from the sampling frame of 6203 households. Simple descriptive analysis technique was used to determine the malaria trend of the district. Integration of Geographic information system and analytic hierarchy process was used to determine the weight of each factor pair wise comparison and weighted linear combination was used to aggregate and produce the hazard and malaria risk maps. Results: Results have shown that 19.92%, 27.96%, 32.35%, 18.93% and 0.82% of the district was very high, high, moderate, low and very low malaria risk areas respectively. The malaria trend of the area was found to be variable across time with 2014 the peak year while the minimum case observed was in 2016. Conclusion: It is possible to conclude that risk maps are important for estimating the scale of the risk, and enable detection of high risk areas, thus facilitating decision making and policy formulation for enhanced malaria control interventions. Key words: Analytic Hierarchy Process; Malaria risk; Malaria trend; Weighted overlay