informing malaria control policy using abms
Malaria is a vector-borne illness affecting millions of lives annually, and it imposes a heavy financial burden felt world-wide. Moreover, there is growing concern that global climate change, in particular, rising temperature, will increase this burden. As such, policy makers are in need of tools capable of informing them about the potential strengths and weaknesses of intervention and control strategies. We extend a previously developed agent-based model of the Anopheles gambiae mosquito, one of the primary vectors of malaria, to investigate how changes in temperature influence the dynamics of malaria transmission and the effectiveness of intervention methods. Our results suggest that temperature increase can both potentially lead to higher malaria transmission rates and alter the effectiveness of a common intervention method. The implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.
malaria climate change agent-based modeling mosquitoes policy making