Spatial distribution of Malaria cases in Mopani District, Limpopo Province, South Africa 2006-2015

Abstract

Background: Malaria is one of the important communicable diseases transmitted by Anopheline mosquitos to humans and is endemic in 108 countries around the world. Most malaria epidemics in African highland countries are caused by Plasmodium Falciparum (P Falciparum) and people residing in highlands are said to be having low immunity to malaria and both children and adults are affected by the disease, whereas vivax malaria is common in lowlands African countries. The current study was undertaken with an aim to determine the spatial distribution of malarial cases during the period 2006 to 2015 in Mopani District of Limpopo Province, South Africa. Methods: Quantitative retrospective descriptive methodology was employed to review the malaria distribution in Mopani district. A total of 12 037 malaria cases were identified for the period of the study and the data was kept anonymously by not using the names of the patients. Ethical clearance was received from the Turfloop Research Committee of University of Limpopo in consideration of section 14, 15, 16, and 17 of National Health Act 61 of 2004. The data was exported to excel spreadsheet and cleaned before exported into SPSS 23.0 software which was used for data analysis. Results: The findings revealed that most malaria cases were found in 2006 and again in 2014 and 2015 respectively. Malaria cases were also seen to be seasonal and were very high during January, February, March and April. Malaria cases also hiked during the month of October. The results also show that most malaria cases were reported between the patients aged of 16 to 25 and 26 to 40 years. There were more males than females who were infected by malaria in Mopani district and the sub district which was found to be having high malaria cases is Greater Giyani with more than 50% of the population (51.1%); followed by Ba Phalaborwa (23.1%); then Greater Tzaneen 13.1%. Conclusion: Mopani district has halved its malaria transmission for the comparison years, however the slow reduction in numbers of deaths is still a cause for concern. Key words: Malaria prevalence, spatial distribution, case fatality rate, elimination.