Effect of climate extremes on health outcomes in Kenya

Abstract

Malaria and pneumonia mortality rates are still high in proportion compared to the growing population. These diseases are of grave concern in developing countries and their burden is quite high even with the notable efforts from the government. There are expectations that malaria could infest new ecological zones that have low immunity towards the disease. This could lead to endemic morbidity and mortality of the disease. In Kenya, pneumonia deaths are on the rise. There are several studies in Sub-Saharan Africa that aimed at understanding the covariates of morbidity and mortality of malaria and pneumonia. Scanty of these literatures sought to understand the effects of climate change on morbidity and mortality of malaria and pneumonia but none tried to investigate the effects of climate extremes on morbidity and mortality of malaria and pneumonia. This study sought to bridge this gap by analyzing the effects climate extremes on mortality of malaria and pneumonia in Kenya. The study used three waves of household survey data from Tegemeo Institute for period of 2004, 2007 and 2010. Climate extremes data was sourced from Kenya meteorological department for a period of 1980 to 2010. To estimate climate extremes at household level, weather data was extrapolated and merged with the Tegemeo data using the GPS coordinate of the households. The study utilized random effects Poisson regression model to estimate the effects of extreme precipitation, minimum, and maximum temperature on mortality of malaria and pneumonia. The study found that climate extreme events do negatively affect outcomes of malaria and pneumonia mortality though not all. As for pneumonia extreme minimum temperature and extreme maximum temperatures, negatively affected mortality. Whereas malaria mortality was found to be affected by extreme minimum temperature and extreme precipitation. The findings further show that social interactions have significant effects on household health outcomes. This study recommends that the health care system in Kenya needs to invest in disease surveillance that focusses on the climate extremes events and their effect on disease burden of malaria and pneumonia mortality.