First, all studies reported the geographic location of the study, but few, if any, reported more specific information on setting such as altitude and annual rainfall, prevalence of malnutrition and AIDS, or immunization coverage against pneumonia vaccines and access to health care [15].
By concentrating the research on two villages, it was possible to collect data for a full calendar year, and so monitor changes in disease prevalence, rainfall, and competing demands on villagers' time according to the agricultural calendar.
In the best fitting PA model, as rainfall increased, positive titer prevalence increased, and as eosinophil count increased, titer prevalence increased (Table 2).
We noted that zones with higher rainfall documented a higher prevalence of stunting and underweight compared with zones with lower rainfall.
Finally, we cannot fully account for seasonal variation in malaria prevalence, though recent rainfall was not associated with parasitemia in a multivariate model (Messina J, manuscript submitted).
Temperature and rainfall were important predictors of prevalence of S. haematobium infection also in Tanzania [ 45] and such statistical relationships are consistent with the known biology of freshwater snails, the intermediate hosts for schistosomes.
However, the direction of the coefficients indicates that extreme forms rainfall is leading to a higher prevalence of moderate stunting.
That matters because higher rainfall in recent years has increased the prevalence of "black pod", a fungal disease which lowers cocoa yields.
Household heads pointed out indicators to identify climate-related stress such as erratic rainfall, drought, temperature change, drying of water sources, prevalence of diseases and lack of human and livestock feed.
Similarly, in western African savannas, higher fire prevalence occurred in relation to increasing rainfall but interacted with both vegetation type and choices by herders and farmers to burn at different times during the fire season [11].
Similarly, in western African savannas, higher fire prevalence occurred in relation to increasing rainfall but interacted with both vegetation type and choices by herders and farmers to burn at different times during the fire season [ 11].
