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Browsing Publications by Subject "Geographic information system"

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    Mapping of Prevalence of Nodding Syndrome and Associated Epilepsy Reporting in Uganda: Spatial – Temporal Approach
    (AGILE, 2018-12-15) Ongaya, Kizito; Oyo, Benedict; Ssemaluulu, Paul; Maiga, Gilbert
    In recent years, transmission of diseases has exhibited new spatial and temporal patterns. Emerging diseases are being discovered more often. Some have unknown transmission patterns and mechanisms for diagnosis. This results to numerous hypothetical postulations just as in the case of nodding syndrome which has affected thousands of children in Uganda. Spatial-temporal analysis may provide a quick mechanism to establish comparative understanding of the various hypotheses ascribed to an emerging disease. This situation, is particularly seen in nodding syndrome where there is considerable suspicion that nodding syndrome is a form of epilepsy. Little literature is available on spatial-temporal comparison between incidences of these two ailments. The aim of this paper is to establish spatial-temporal relationships between ailments diagnosed as nodding syndrome and ailments diagnosed as epilepsy. We carried out an exploratory survey in three districts of Northern Uganda. Spatial data of health centres were recorded and ArcGIS was used for display. Our findings established that, there was significant spatial-temporal relationship of diagnosis reporting of nodding syndrome and epilepsy. The study concludes that the surveillance mechanisms for nodding syndrome established in 2012 are effective. At the same time, the study affirms that in the event of occurrence of an emerging disease, when there is no established clinical diagnosis, geographical information systems approach is an effective alternative investigation mechanism to establish relationships between hypothetically similar outbreaks.
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    Towards a Spatial-Temporal Model of Prevalence of Nodding Syndrome and Epilepsy
    (Springer, 2019) Ongaya, Kizito; Ssemalullu, Paul; Oyo, Benedict; Maiga, Gilbert; Aturinde, Augustus
    Nodding syndrome is an emerging disease which have unknown transmission patterns and no properly established mechanisms for diagnosis leading to numerous hypothetical postulations. It has affected thousands of children in Uganda with debilitating effect and serious economic consequences. Spatial temporal analysis may provide a quick mechanism to establish comparative understanding of the various hypotheses ascribed to nodding syndrome and any other emerging diseases with similar clinical manifestation. There is considerable suspicion that “nodding syndrome is a form of epilepsy”, a hypothesis that has hardly been investigated in literature. The aim of the study described in this paper is to establish spatial-temporal relationships between ailments diagnosed as nodding syndrome and ailments diagnosed as epilepsy. An exploratory cross section survey in three districts of Northern Uganda was done. Spatial data of health centers were recorded and ArcGIS was used for display. The findings show significant spatial temporal correlation of diagnosis reporting of nodding syndrome to epilepsy. The regression statistics overall, epilepsy significantly (p < 0.05) ex-plains about 58% of Nodding syndrome variability. The F-statistic shows a very highly significant value (p = 8.20481E-13; p < 0.05), meaning that the output of the regression is not by chance.