MALARIA MORTALITY MODELING IN THAILAND

Abstract

Malaria has been a leading cause of mortality in Thailand for many decades. The objective was to model of malaria mortality rate in Thailand by gender, age, year and region. A retrospective analysis of the malaria death was conducted by using the national vital registration database for the 10-year period from 2000 to 2009, provided by the Ministry of Interior and coded as cause-of-death using ICD-10. The linear, Poisson regression and negative binomial models were used for modeling and forecasting age-specific malaria mortality rates in Thailand. We use these models to forecast the malaria mortality which is likely to occur in the near future in order to prevent the malaria mortality through the use of suitable measures. Among the models fitted, the best were chosen based on the analysis of deviance and the negative binomial generalized linear model was clearly appropriate fit. The model contains additive effects associated with the gender, age group, year and regions. There is need of malaria control measures to remain on a sustained and long-term basis for the high malaria burden rate of Thailand.