Climate impacts on malaria in Africa

Climate change is expected to exacerbate the global burden of malaria, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, which currently bears the highest impact of the disease. Malaria is highly sensitive to climate shift. While gradual, long-term changes to conditions such as temperature, precipitation, and humidity impact transmission, increasingly, extreme weather events are disrupting malaria prevention and control. Boston Consulting Group and the Malaria Atlas Project have conducted the first quantitative analysis of how the impact of extreme weather events, such as floods and cyclones, affects the malaria burden on the continent, as well as the implications of longonset climate change. This research involved developing a climate model to predict changes in intensity, duration, and frequency of floods and cyclones across the continent. Additionally, it estimated the impact of these climate change driven events on malaria-related deaths through the year 2049. This analysis builds on existing work by the Malaria Atlas Project regarding the effects of long-onset climate change on malaria and will complement forthcoming peer-reviewed publications.