N. Pemola Devi and R. K. Jauhari
An association between meteorological variables and malaria cases in district Dehradun (Uttarakhand), India has been worked out by taking into consideration 12 years data w.e.f. 1999 to 2010. Results revealed occurrence of 14 species of Anopheles mosquitoes with a dominating abundance of An. fluviatilis, An. maculatus, An. stephensi, An. culicifacies, An. subpictus and An. nigerrimus. Pearson’s correlation analysis between malaria cases and various meteorological variables (total rainfall, mean of maximum, minimum and mean temperature and relative humidity at 07:19 and 14:19h) at 0, 1, 2 and 3 months lagged periods was conducted. It was gathered that all the variables except relative humidity (early hours i.e., 07:19 h) showed positive correlation with monthly incidence of malaria. Further, highest significant correlation was found between rainfall and MPI (r = 0.705; p<0.0001) when the data were staggered to allow lag of one-month. Autocorrelation among the independent variables exhibited high positive correlation between monthly mean temperature and minimum temperature (0.962), while highest negative association was found between monthly maximum temperature and relative humidity at early hours i.e., -0.706.
