Association of Dengue Case Load and Environmental Factors in Four Potentially Disease Risk Areas of Pakistan

Abstract

Abstract Dengue is a crucial public health dilemma. Scarce water supply, population density, inadequate solid waste management, poor socio-economic level and climatic variations are recognized as key factors in Aedes breeding and later on in the transmission of Dengue Fever (DF). Dengue incidence (cases) is strongly associated with climatic tiers such as relative humidity, temperature and rainfall. Our findings on values of the bivariate correlation analysis have revealed positive correlation between rainfall and dengue incidences (r = 0.75**, r = 0.913**, r = 0.948**, r = 0.961** P < 0.01) as rainfall was the main cause of increase in number of cases in all districts. Moreover r = 0.613* P < 0.05, has depicted a moderate positive association between monthly average humidity and number of incidences, and r = 0.648* P < 0.05, suggested that there is a moderately positive relationship between monthly average temperature and number of incidences Moreover, high amount of monsoon rainfall 400.93mm in the year 2019 and post-monsoon seasons strongly contributed in the dengue virus outbreak.