Modelling Dengue Occurrence Probabilities for 2016 Summers in Punjab

Abstract

The reemergence of the vector borne diseases in the last 30 years owing to the major changes in public health policies along with anthropogenic activities leading towards disturbing the natural eco systems have caused an alarming state of affair in public health domain. One of the major vector borne epidemics is Dengue, caused by specie vector Aedes Aegypti and Aedes Albopictus has become progressively invasive, effecting 50 million people alone is South East Asia. For the last fifteen years, Pakistan has seen major and minor outbreaks of the disease providing suitable environmental and climatic conditions, favorable for the disease spread. However, the lack of occurrence data for specie distribution has always been an issue for researchers; the following study suggests a potential alternative approach to model the probability occurrence of disease distribution for the province by using specie distribution modelling for Punjab province. The study integrates the disease data along with environmental and other physical covariates in Maxent, using different combination of correlated and uncorrelated environmental variables to delineate the regions that are at high risk towards a potential disease outbreak. Dengue Fever is homogenously distributed in the lowlands of the province, but the high probability of the dengue presence in the upper and central region indicates that disease is rapidly spreading in the regions with high urban densities and peripheral region around them, offering ideal environmental conditions for the specie growth. The changing land use and land cover dynamics in the region has a strong influence in the disease distribution.