Objective: To analyze the determinants of malaria in Anhui province during the year of 2004-2006.
Methods: A GIS-based database of malaria at the township scale of Anhui province was established, using remote sensing and spatial analysis technologies. Methods on statistical analysis, principal component analysis combined with logistic regression analysis were synthetically used to analyze the association between malaria and environmental factors.
Results: Malaria epidemics in Anhui province during 2004-2006 mainly occurred in the northern districts of Huai River, and the epidemics had become more serious yearly. The determinants of malaria at the township scale mainly included factors as temperature, rainfall, normalized difference vegetable index and elevation. If the lowest temperature in a year, which appeared the fourth principal component of the temperature index series, increased by one unit, the probability of incidence of malaria would decrease by 33%. If the total annual rainfall, which was ihe first principal component of the rainfall index series, increased by one unit, the probability would decrease by 27%. If the elevation increased by 10 meters, the probability would decrease by 2%. However, he relationship between Normalized Difference Vegetable Index (NDVI) and the probability of incidence of malaria was different. If the NDVI had a one unit increase, the probability would increase 3.28 times.
Conclusion: The northern districts of Huai River during 2004-2006 appeared to be a new spatio-temporal cluster when reemergence of malaria epidemics had occurred in Auhui province since 2000. Terrain and physiognomy, nature and circumstances factors, such as temperature and rainfall had affected the incidence rates of malaria. Our research data from Anhui province would provide some important references to the discovery of main reasons on the reemergence of malaria epidemics since 2000, especially in the central geographic areas of China.