Simulating the spread of malaria using a generic transmission model for mosquito borne infectious diseases
Malaria is a critical infection caused by parasites which are spread to humans through mosquito bites. Approximately half of the world's population is in peril of getting infected by malaria. Mosquito borne diseases have a standard behavior where they are transmitted in the same manner, only through vector mosquito. Taking this into account, a generic spatial temporal model for transmission of multiple mosquito borne diseases had been formulated. Our interest is to reproduce the actual cases of different mosquito borne diseases using the generic model and then predict future cases so as to improve control and target measures competently. In this paper, we utilize notified weekly malaria cases in four districts in Sarawak, Malaysia, namely Kapit, Song, Belaga and Marudi. The actual cases for 36 weeks, which is from week 39 in 2012 to week 22 in 2013, are compared with simulations of the generic spatial temporal transmission mosquito borne diseases model. We observe that the simulation results display corresponding result to the actual malaria cases in the four districts.