JOURNAL TRANSCRIPT
Le Infezioni in Medicina, n. 3, 255-262, 2018
ORIGINAL ARTICLES
255
Relationship between malaria epidemiology and the human development index in Colombia and Latin America Daniela Franco-Herrera1, Daniela González-Ocampo1, Valentina Restrepo-Montoya1, Juan Esteban Gómez-Guevara1, Nathalia Alvear-Villacorte1, Alfonso J. Rodíguez-Morales1,2,3 Public Health and Infection Research Group, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universidad Tecnologica de Pereira, Pereira, Risaralda, Colombia; 2 Committee on Tropical Medicine, Zoonoses and Travel Medicine, Asociación Colombiana de Infectología (ACIN), Bogotá, DC, Colombia; 3 Medical School, Faculty of Health Sciences, UniFranz, Cochabamba, Bolivia 1
SUMMARY The objective of our study was to establish the relationship between the Human Development Index (HDI), Gini coefficient and Unsatisfied Basic Needs (UBN), with the incidence of malaria in Colombia and five endemic countries of Latin America (Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru) between 2005 and 2012. Through an ecological study the HDI was obtained from the data base of the United Nations Development Programme; the Gini index and the UBN were obtained from Colombia’s National Administrative Department of Statistics, and the malaria incidence from the World Health Organization’s programme “Roll Back Malaria” and from the Colombian epidemiological surveillance system. The annual variation of the variables was evaluated, and linear and non-linear regressions (exponentials) were modelled. Upon analysing the data with the regres-
n INTRODUCTION
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alaria in humans is a systemic parasitic infection caused by five species of Plasmodium genus (P. falciparum, P. vivax, P. malariae, P. ovale and P. knowlesii), which are transmitted to humans mainly through insect vectors, female mosquitoes
Corresponding author Alfonso J. Rodíguez-Morales E-mail:
[email protected]
sion models, it was noted that countries with higher malaria incidence rates were those with lower values of HDI, the association being significant (r2=0.4233; p