European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON THE OCCURRENCE OF CHOLERA IN KATHMANDU, NEPAL

Supriya Sharma*, Geeta Shakya, Reshma Tuladhar, Megha Raj Banjara, Anjana Singh

ABSTRACT

Traditionally, cholera has been viewed as a strictly faecal-oral infection but recently increased attention is being paid to the environmental determinants of the disease. Therefore, this retrospective study was conducted to assess the impact of climatic factors - temperature, water precipitation and relative humidity on the occurrence/outbreak of cholera from 2008 to 2014 in Kathmandu district, Nepal. The monthly number of cholera cases was obtained from District Public Health Office, Kathmandu and meteorological data from Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, Nepal. The obtained data was entered into Microsoft Office Excel 2007 in a standard format and transferred into Statistical Package for Social Sciences 21.0. Time series analysis was done by using autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model. The yearly distribution of cholera cases in Kathmandu district showed an increasing trend from 2008 onwards and reached a peak in 2010 after which the number of cases follow a decreasing trend. The disease seems to be endemic in the district and cases appear throughout the year with seasonal rise in cholera cases starting from July. Temperature (maximum and minimum), rainfall and average relative humidity didn’t show any positive correlations with number of cholera cases. Further studies on impact of climate change on cholera should be done dealing with data on daily basis and for a period of longer duration.

Keywords: Climate change, Cholera, Kathmandu.