This research work examined the relationship between rainfall and
the prevalence of malaria among pregnant women in Abia-South Senatorial District of Abia State, Nigeria. The rainfall data used in this
study was extracted from Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Satellite while the data on the incidence of malaria among pregnant women
from the Headquarters of Primary Health Care Centers in Abia-South
Senatorial District, Abia State. Preliminary analysis showed that incidence of malaria cases was on a steady increase while rainfall in the
area remained relatively constant across time. The Pearson-Product
Moment Correlation was employed to assess the strength of linear relationship between the variables considered. The correlation coefficient
(r=0.04; p=0.807) shows that there is no statistical significant association between amount of rainfall and incidence of malaria among
pregnant women in the locality. Further more the slope of the negative
binomial regression model was 0.000114 whose exponent value is 1.000114.
The exponent value which is roughly 1 indicates that any change in amount
of rainfall will leave cases of malaria among pregnant women in the area unchanged since 1 is a multiplicative identity. Therefore, rainfall should not be considered in mitigating the transmission of
malaria in the study area. However, further research should be carried
out to examine the impact of other climatic variables like temperature
and relative humidity on malaria prevalence in the study area as well as
other human activities which could be cause of increase in the incidence
of malaria among pregnant women in the area.
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