A Retrospective Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Malaria Prevalence in Kano State, Nigeria: A 20- Year Geospatial Assessment

Malaria remains a profound public health threat in Nigeria,. They contribute significantly to the total world malarial prevalence. In order to carry out the proposed spatio-temporal analysis of the malarial infection incidences in the 44 Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Kano State in Nigeria between 2000–2019, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Hot Spot Analysis (Getis-Ord Gi*), Global Moran's Index Analysis, and ARIMA were employed. ARIMA time series modeling helped analyze the intensity of malarial infections. Henceforth, the obtained results clearly reveal positive autocorrelation among the malarial infection patterns across the 44 LGAs in Kano State between 2000–2019 at the significance level of p-value < 0.01. Moreover, the obtained Hot Spot Analysis revealed the intensified malarial infection patterns to exist in the northwestern as well as in the center of the Kano State. From the provided map images in the corresponding figures below, the following were revealed: the melded hot spot indicates the intensified malarial infections in the northwestern and centered Kano State LGAs. In the given map images below, the hot spot represents Doguwa and Gaya LGA as the intensified malarial infection area. On the other hand, hot spot analysis revealed the cold spot malarial infection patterns among the Southern as well as the Eastern LGAs. The malarial infection intensity indices among the 44 LGAs in Kano State between 2000–2019 were observed to be non stationary. Such patterns can be best described by ARIMA(1,1,1), emphasizing the strong dependency between the pattern intensity at a given time as well as the previous pattern intensities.