Predicting diarrhoea outbreaks with climate change.

Journal: PloS one
Published Date:

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Climate change is expected to exacerbate diarrhoea outbreaks across the developing world, most notably in Sub-Saharan countries such as South Africa. In South Africa, diseases related to diarrhoea outbreak is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. In this study, we modelled the impacts of climate change on diarrhoea with various machine learning (ML) methods to predict daily outbreak of diarrhoea cases in nine South African provinces.

Authors

  • Tassallah Abdullahi
    Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa.
  • Geoff Nitschke
    Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa.
  • Neville Sweijd
    Applied Centre for Climate and Earth Systems Science, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Cape Town, South Africa.