Application of spatial scan statistics on malaria hotspot detection in Indonesia

Abstract

Malaria is one of the world's most important public health concerns, causing over a million deaths and up to 500 million clinical cases each year. During 2000-2006, in South East Asia Region, malaria incidence remains static between the ranges 2.43 -2.77 millions. As an archipelago nation, malaria condition in Indonesia is vary for each island. Java and Bali Islands which populated of 70% from total Indonesian population is categorized as a hypo-endemic area. In other islands that sparsely outer of Java and Bali consist of Sumatera, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Nusa Tenggara, Maluku and Papua, malaria is found at much higher levels. These areas are categorized from hypo- to hyper endemic. Outbreak of the disease is important to know before it happens. For this purpose, mapping of the malaria cases is important to prevent the outbreak as an early warning sistem. This paper shows the spreading of malaria in Indonesia in 2001-2005. The method is scan statistic and the software to be used is SatScan by Martin Kuldor:ff The computation yields the result that the cluster regions of high malaria cases tend to decrease from year to year. The highest was in east and central of Indonesia in 2001 and 2002. From 2003 to 2004, malaria hotspots werefound in some parts of South Sumatra, West Kalimantan and Nusa Tenggara Islands. In 2005 the hotspot back to Gorontalo, South - East Sulawesi, North Sulawesi, and South Sulawesi.