Abstract

RODRIGUEZ V., JAVIER. TEMPORAL DINAMIC PROBABILITIES OF THE MALARY EPIDEMIC IN COLOMBIA. rev.fac.med [online]. 2009, vol.17, n.2, pp.214-221. ISSN 0121-5256.

The malaria epidemic has been studied from space-time mathematical models searching for causal relationships to predict their development, such as climate, geographical location, population movements, among others. Based on the calculation of probabilities, the temporal dynamics of malaria in Colombia since 1960 were characterized. For this purpose a total space of probabilities was built that quantifies the annual appearance of infected cases in ranges of 5,000 and 10,000 , and the mean square deviation for sets of ranges was assessed, comparing the behavior of the probabilities for these sets. Finally, the number of infected cases in 2007 was predicted with the associated value to the corresponding ranges for the last three consecutive years. According to the prediction, the number of malaria cases in 2007 would have been between 106,000 and 116,000 with the assessment of the ranges of 10,000, and between 108,000 and 113,000, with ranges of 5,000. These values were compared with the report from the National Institute of Health of the 52o epidemiological week of 2007, which registered 108,848 infected, obtaining a 100% accurate prediction of the phenomenon with both ranges. The evaluation of the dynamics of the epidemic based on the definition of ranges, and the probabilistic study of registered values respect to them, allows to predict the annual number of infected cases of malaria in Colombia, in an acausal and simple way, with a methodology easy to implement which also saves resources.

Keywords : probability; epidemic; malaria.

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